Celebrating Eid in Kashmir and the Growing Insensitivity of Our Times

A newspaper reported that 18000 people offered namaz in Srinagar on Friday (the Jumma before Eid). The population of Srinagar as per 2011 census was around 11.8 lakhs. And one wonders why the number of people offering prayers was too low generally and secondly, why does one want it as the news headlines. Muslims offering prayers on this day in Delhi did not make it to news. Obviously, the situation is abnormal and has been created wilfully. This Eid will not be same for the people of Kashmir, as guns seem to outnumber people. There is something wrong, abnormal as the Jama Masjid of Srinagar remained closed even on the last Jumma before Eid.

Festivals are always eagerly awaited. For some like the Bengalis they literally go crazy so does the market months before Durga Puja each year. There is a lot of planning, managing the everyday during those four-five days. Festivities have their own important place in our lives. People await Diwali, Christmas or Navratra because it gives them opportunities to do what they cannot during the rest of the year. They express love towards their dear ones, be with them, remind themselves that they are part of a human society after all the alienating lives they lead throughout the year struggling to meet their everyday necessities. It is the sense of celebration that entices people apart from their religious significance. This is the reason why there is more than one Eid (which means ‘celebration’). Munshi Premchand describes the exuberance of Eid ul Fitr in his famous story Eidgah:

A full thirty days after Ramadan comes Eid. How wonderful and beautiful is the morning of Eid! The trees look greener, the field more festive, the sky has a lovely pink glow. Look at the sun! It comes up brighter and more dazzling than before to wish the world a very happy Eid. The village is agog with excitement. Everyone is up early to go to the Eidgah mosque. One finds a button missing from his shirt and is hurrying to his neighbour’s house for thread and needle. Another finds that the leather of his shoes has become hard and is running to the oil-press for oil to grease it.

There is supposed to be a sense of excitement in air for everyone – old and young, men and women. The Jumma before the Eid is an important one and like any other festivity it is expected that the families reunite and celebrate the festival. The young, impressionable minds, who would have enjoyed the day most would ask why they were denied the pleasure. Those who deny become perpetrators for those young minds and on this day they would see the troops as those perpetrators managing the mosques, the streets and markets not letting them go free, run around and engage in all kind of disobedient acts that they would have done. The discomfort at being monitored every second destroys the possibility of celebration even if officially there is a relaxation of curfew. Premchand captured how the young boys waited more for this day than others. He wrote:

The boys are more excited than the others. Some of them kept only one  fast— and that only till noon. Some didn’t even do that. But no one can deny  them the joy of going to the Eidgah. Fasting is for the grown-ups and the  aged. For the boys it is only the day of Eid. They have been talking about it  all the time. At long last the day has come.

However, the Kashmiris cannot contact their family members and or be with them. Whatever the Indian state did has denied the possibility of celebration of one of their most awaited festivals to a huge community. It has taken away the basic right that any individual wants – be with their family, celebrate with freedom the festivities and enjoy the day that the children, youth, old, men and women await so eagerly.

The Human Pain and Suffering and Insensitivity of Our Times

What surprises is that the people in rest of India are more driven by what the Indian state has done and less concerned with the sufferings of other humans. Would it have been a normal, acceptable situation if people were denied celebration of Diwali or Durga Puja in Delhi or Calcutta? It would have created a havoc as media would have ran campaigns to show how people were denied of even their basic human desires of celebration, meet their families and share the joys with others. Media houses move their microphones across different locations asking people what they think about the abrogation of Article 370. People respond with a predominantly positive feeling about abrogation. Newspapers do not even mention that there are protests and that there is huge discomfort that people are experiencing at being denied the normalcy of leading their everyday lives. Rather, there are WhatsApp messages now celebrating the possibility of buying land in Kashmir or showing a saffron image of an Akhand Bharat. The political patriarchs are joking about the Kashmiri women. What all of them, from the people on the streets to the political patriarchs, miss is the pain and suffering of Kashmiri people and forget that those pains are same for everyone whether it happens in Delhi or Srinagar and Kargil. 

One of the hallmarks of what has happened in last five-six years has been the intensification of a dehumanising ethos. We do not get perturbed when someone is lynched, when mass crimes of rape and physical violence happens against particular communities, when food censor happens for the majority simply because they like to eat non-vegetarian food during the whole year. The protests or solidarity meetings that happen against lynching or against atrocities on tribal and intellectuals are attended by very few people. Increasingly, the feeling of empathy has replaced with mechanical world of try to guard one’s own interests and if any act that does not remotely appears connected with these interests one lets it go. On the other hand, the media (social and electronic alike) manages to create a consensus about what is one’s interest. This process has led to insensitivity towards the others who are made to suffer.

The most obscene manifestation of this will be when Kashmiri people won’t be celebrating Eid and the rest of India will be indifferent to them watching and re-watching Indian Oil sponsored display of masculinity with Bear Grylls in evening.

Photo courtesy: Khaleej Times

Ifs and buts of Elections 2019

I am not a psephologist, neither do I owe the ability to perfectly predict what goes on inside mind of Indians. Social scientists of variety have been at it to tell us who will win, whose winnability is it this time in Indian Parliamentary elections. Facebook’s, WhatsApp and so on, they are all over it. Hats off to their ability.

I got inspired and thought I will also try my hand at this very attractive vocation. So I asked the question to myself: who will win the General Elections 2019? I don’t have a clear cut answer and that is an answer in itself because it does not seem like a wave – a clean sweep that we saw in 2014. Then I went on to see what if

What if SP-BSP alliance wins around 40-45 seats in UP

What if Congress performs a little better in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh following their win in assembly elections thereby preventing 2014 repeat performance for BJP there

What if DMK-Congres combine performs well and takes away at least 75% seats in Tamil Nadu

What if Congress-JD(S) combine manage to get half of seats in Karnataka and Left does the same in Kerala

What if TMC wins around 34-36 seats in Bengal

What if North East does not repeat itself as 2014

With such ifs BJP may not retain the position it held in 2014. This would mean that some other political forces might form the next government. And given that it is all about ifs and buts this may or may not happen. What is important is to think about what will happen if there is a new government – new political forces who claim to represent a counter-narrative to the earlier regime?

The Battle at Begusarai: More than loss and win it is about what kind of politics we want

There are a lot of anti-BJP intellectuals who have not been writing why people should vote for Kanhaiya Kumar. And I understand the predicament. For them, dilemma emanates from the fact that either of the anti-BJP candidates – RJD or CPI – would work. I also understand why both are put at the same plane – because there is a belief among many that the need is to defeat BJP at all costs, which I may not agree with. Defeating BJP is also an ideological act of defeating a politics that uses communal hatred, hates dissent and neglects the masses to serve a few corporates. Any opposition to right wing must be able to answer why despite alliances of different kinds it has not been able to curtail growth of right-wing in India since 1989. Similarly, it must be able to answer if fighting right wing is only about electoral alliances or is it also a much deeper question of socio-economic transformation. Begusarai to me is an interesting conjuncture to dwell upon these questions.

The elections for the Begusarai constituency have acquired significance because of two reasons: firstly, it has Kanhaiya Kumar, who has been made into a symbol of anti-BJP politics, contesting, and secondly the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are pitted against Kanhaiya Kumar. As usual the politics of caste and religion is being played at its best by the RJD and BJP. In this age of technology driven democracy the social media is flooded with messages on why one should keep community’s interest in mind while voting. For secularism and democracy to exist a more profound battle needs to be waged – a battle that is ideological, a battle that transcends the communitarian politics in an age and time when community’s political allegiances keep shifting. This is also an age and time when identitarian politics shorn of its political economy is debated by journalists and university academics in isolation from what is happening on the ground. This is not a battle about an individual called Kanhaiya Kumar. It is neither a battle of one community’s assertion over another. It is rather a battle about how those political forces, who win in the name of a particular religion or caste, when come to Parliament have the singular agenda of destroying the sense of collective, privatising each and sphere of our lives, transform all of us into precarious wage-workers, destroy any semblance of the public (whether in health or education) and take away from us our rights to express, dissent and disagree.

In a situation when Raj Thackeray supports Congress, when Dalit formations like RPI and Dalit Panthers go with right wing, when RLSP shifts from being a BJP’s partner to being Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) or when Nitish Kumar keeps wavering between secular and communal goal posts it has become difficult to make sense of secular politics or for that matter politics of social justice. What was RLSP, RPI, JD(U) or others doing when Muslims were being lynched, when sectarian food regimes were being put in place or when universities were attacked consistently as they were in the government? Everything that the central government was doing had their tacit acceptance. Their goal posts shift from being secular to being communal and vice-versa. When Sanjay Kumar, a faculty at central university in Motihari was nearly lynched to what extent did the political compatriots talking about communalism and social justice take the battle forward apart from issuing statements? The political battle is turned into a farce by political organisations such as JD (U), which sought vote on an anti-communal plank (as in 2015 assembly elections) but became part of the communal government. In a situation when politics has become farce, when it has been shorn on any ideological commitment to the ideas of justice, equality or transformation and when electoral battles are no longer about ideas but about being in power the discourse of CPI candidate in Begusarai that we do not promise you things that are beyond our control but we promise you that we will not sift sides, that we will fight alongside you, that we will contest the forces that create unemployment, agrarian distress, sectarian violence and so on is a refreshing break. It, then, becomes an electoral battle about ideas and politics of transformation. It ceases to be a rhetoric or typical opportunist bourgeois electoral process. In this kind of situation the battle is not about an individual such as Kanhaiya Kumar. He is merely an embodiment of whatever has transpired in politics in last few years. What brings together so many people in his support is not only his ability to brazenly stand against the powers that are out to destroy the ideas and places that talk of a world where you are not put behind bars for being a dissident but because he symbolises a possibility, a hope that would enkindle a new wave (whose direction will have to be decided soon).

Some journalists went to the extent of wrongly presenting facts about the elections, more so when there is anti-BJP Mahagathbandhan hell bent on ensuring that the CPI candidate should not win. This is not a Battle only about winning or losing. It is more than that. It is about upholding a politics, which is negotiating between the rhetoric of social justice, which didn’t lead to anything more than curtailing the hegemony of savarnas, and the politics of hatred. It is about moving beyond that rhetoric by bringing in the element of redistribution along with recognition while simultaneously countering the menace of the most ugly collaboration of neoliberal and neoconservative forces. Kanhaiya Kumar and Begusarai in that sense must be read as symbols in this Battle.

It has also been seen that once again the onus of putting together an anti-BJP front has been put on the left with questions such as why is it contesting against RJD or Congress. RJD has put up its own candidate against CPI in Begusarai and Rahul Gandhi has contested against a left candidate in Kerala. A close look at the history of India would reveal that the Left has been moreprincipled and consistent in its fight against communalism. Not only that the recent resistance against the right wing in India on the ground has been led by the left be it the farmer mobilisations or the student’s resistance in campuses. The candidature of Kanhaiya Kumar needs to be seen in this light as well – as a person who withstood the onslaught of the repressive state apparatuses of police and criminalised ethos of the right wing student politics. Every time one thinks of what happened to JNU during last five years among many images that conjures in front of our eyes one of them is that of Kanhaiya Kumar resisting the administration, being hounded inside the justice system physically by lawyers while the institution only stood there looking at all this like a helpless entity. Can you recall the image of Kanhaiya Kumar and Vishwajit being assaulted inside court premises by lawyers? It was a blatant statement from the right wing that spaces such as that of even judiciary is not beyond their reach (remember that nothing happened to those assaulting lawyers).  

I am yet to see that image of a fighter in the RJD leadership or the candidate from Begusarai. While one would not question Laloo Yadav for stopping the rath of Advani when no one was daring to but the current leadership is not the same. Tejaswi Yadav or Tanveer Hasan do not invoke any imagery in you specially if you have grown up in Bihar and have kept a close watch on its politics. Their names or that of the RJD today invokes an image of a blank canvas, without any concrete thought or action on the issues that confront us today. There is a general lack of ideological tenacity in anti-right wing politics. The Mahagathbandhan is no different – Jeetan Ram Majhi was with Nitish Kumar, RLSP was part of NDA in not so distant past and many other leaders have been part of different set of politics at different points of time. In other words, it is an alliance, which is not so embedded in a politics of anti-conservativism or anti-neoliberalism. Kanhaiya Kumar as of today represents a distinction – of being someone who is fearless, has fought on the streets and will hopefully continue to do that against both the forces and it will be a fight of principles not driven by the temporary electoral interests.

The intellectuals who were talking about defeating communal forces never posed the question to RJD and Congress about its decision to put up candidates against the left even though they were not asking for many seats. What history does Tanvir Hasan symbolises in this fight against the behemoth of an authoritarian state? Or for that matter what are the credentials of Tejaswi Yadav as a political personality to fight the right wing resurgence. If electoral choices are to be made on the basis on contributions of how much individuals have contributed to a fight then Kanhaiya Kumar from Begusarai or Amarnath Yadav from Siwan for that matter clearly win the case. By putting up candidates against them the other ‘secular’ formations have only played in the hands of the right wing.

This is a defining moment in the history of neoliberal-neoconservative India. It is so not only because the impending direction of politics will consolidate the common sensing of hatred towards minorities but it will also normalise the destruction of universities and schools – their intellectual-ideological structures. Killing someone because you don’t like his way of life, his food habits, his ideas etc., will be the new normal. Differences, debates, disagreements will become pathologies as authoritarianism in institutions of all types increase, surveillance reaches new heights and terminologies such as Justice will lose their presence even in texts. This moment is also defining because it awaits what comes out as an alternative vision to this authoritarianism – an ideological framing of idea of justice entertwined with anti-neoliberalism and anti-neoconservativism is urgently needed. Unless done we will slide down further towards an order that would not allow any space to meaningful opposition. Oppositions would remain only as superficial structures under garb of different names with similar politics. We have seen that in some of the states recently. What is required is a concrete political vision that is being put forth in Begusarai through the CPI candidate. It would need further debate, refinement and concretisation but right now as an electoral process the elections in Begusarai needs our attention as a crucial political statement.

(Note: Image courtesy https://www.socialnews.xyz/2019/04/12/begusarai-bihar-2019-lok-sabha-elections-cpis-kanhaiya-kumar-during-an-election-campaign-gallery/)

Begusarai – Has BJP made it a prestige issue?

A thirty two year old is pitched against a senior, seasoned politician in an otherwise non-descript constituency called Begusarai. But it does not seem non-descript at all. Initially, it was RJD’s insistence to not have CPI on its alliance (largely because of this candidate) and now it is because of an interesting battle on cards. The BJP national president had to campaign in this constituency on 24th April. He does not go to each and every constituency and the speakers at the function had to bring back their favourite past time – nation, nationalism, religion – albeit in a hidden tenor but could not refrain from it. Some other star speakers who specialise in the same narrative might follow on. Nobody talked of unemployment, infrastructure, minimum wages, violence again women and so on. Quite naturally, they cannot.

Kanhaiya had other kind of star campaigners – students from nook and corner of India, Javed Akhter, Prakash Raj, Swara Bhaskar and so on. They did not come due to party allegiance but due to the battle that is being waged by Kanhaiya Kumar. He has been made into a symbol of sorts in this fight against the way nation has been run, politics from WhatsApp has been practiced and welfarist institutions have been decimated. One does not know who will win (amidst reports of EVM malfunctions from across country and the effectiveness with which hatred is spread) but it is definitely proving to be a grave concern for BJP for it fears that its candidate may lose to a young turk. BJP is not so concerned at CPI sending another MP to the Parliament but it is concerned at this young man sitting there and blowing apart the rhetoric of the right in the Parliament.

Giriraj Singh did not want to contest from here and had to reluctantly come here – an issue that didn’t make locals very happy. Kanhaiya Kumar, on the other hand, was already in fray for last few months, awaiting a final decision from the party (CPI). The third candidate, Tanvir Hasan, has never won from here and has been a MLC, known to be a quiet person. Begusarai is a prestige seat not so much for Tanvir Hasan or RJD because they do not have to contribute much to the fight against BJP, otherwise they would have not made this a triangular contest putting a candidate without any credentials of anti-right wing struggle against Kanhaiya Kumar who has become a symbol of anti-right struggle today.

The right would go to any extent to ensure that any symbol of resistance against its politics is subdued. The fight for Kanhaiya Kumar is going to be a long one, beyond these elections. The reaction that one gets in Begusarai from the masses cutting across caste and religion is that they would like Kanhaiya Kumar to win and, thereby, shows that the BJP’s prestige seat is not a prestige for the locals. And RJD’s advisors and leaders will never be forgiven for fragmenting a consensus against the right wing politics.

Afghanistan: Can it emerge out of its Darkness with External Assistance?

Wars have been fought historically to control territories in physical sense as well as in non-physical economic sense. In contemporary times these wars are not doing anything different. They have only acquired different weapons – from military stockpiles to the power of media, which presents to the world what the powers that be want to project. The reality and truth have to be dealt with sceptically because the way media presents it to us has been question many a times. They are constructed; they are partisan; and they are part of a larger project. I was a school going child when the television channels and print media had declared that the whole world in unison wanted a war against Saddam Hussain after he trampled Kuwait under his tanks. It left me thinking if the whole world really wanted the western imperialists to wage this war. I know I did not want and I know many more people did not want this. I also know that a survey was not done across world to ask people what they thought about this invasion by the Western forces. A war, which began with the farcical agenda of restoring democracy, could not do much to that effect even after thousands and thousands died over a period of time. America could neither achieve control over natural resources in Iraq nor could it win the war. It created one after the other new ghosts with missiles, grenades and automatic rifles, which came from nowhere else but from USA itself.

When ISIS took over it began using the same arms, manufactured by 24 countries, that it captured from the Iraqi and other forces[i]. A report by Conflict Armament Research (CAR) said that some weapons bought by the U.S. military in 2015 ended up in the hands of Islamic State fighters within two months. “Under at least two different programs, the U.S. government has supplied weapons to Syrian armed groups, first to fight the Assad regime and then to assist the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State. Some of ISIS’ weapons are also thought to have been pilfered from military stockpiles while others were purchased illicitly”[ii]. We very well know what has happened in case of Afghanistan and who armed whom in its history. Those ghosts from the past are the ones haunting today. Politically, Afghanistan seems to be moving in a direction where the forces that wanted Taliban out and considered it as their enemy have now accepted its presence and inevitability. Taliban is being legitimised or has forced powers to recognise itself[iii]. Obviously, a country like India says it is doing this to promote democracy in Afghanistan as its spokesperson said: “India’s consistent policy has been that such efforts should be Afghan-led, Afghan-owned, and Afghan-controlled and with participation of the Government of Afghanistan”[iv]. When Gen. Austin Miller, the head of NATO’s Resolute Support Mission, said that “this is not going to be won militarily… This is going to a political solution” he was only reinforcing the fact that USA and others had failed to secure even their economic interests and had murdered thousands of people in vain. It was also a reiteration that they must get out of Afghanistan. However, it seems difficult and after the mess that they created over 16 years or so it will become extremely difficult for Afghanistan to come back to any kind of normalcy in near future.

War today, as in past, revolves around economy and economic benefits. Unfortunately, for likes of USA or UK they cannot go today and militarily occupy some country as they ran their colonial dreams. Hence, they develop new methods to retain and expand their control. While they spend a lot on military their interest lies in unilaterally deciding how to lead a nation without colonising them in the classic sense. They are colonised today in newer ways – through indirect and direct management of the local democracies and playing a role in the national policy-making and so on.

War means Business: It is not about democracy at all

If one looks at statistics s/he will be tell the amount of money that comes to Afghanistan as foreign aid and the amount that is spent on military operations or towards militarisation of the Afghan society. USA is supposed to have spent a total of around $45 billion in 2018, which is supposed to include “$5 billion for Afghan forces and $13 billion for U.S. forces inside Afghanistan. Much of the rest is for logistical support. Some $780 million goes toward economic aid”[v]. When it comes to spendings, we must not be mistaken that it is being spent on safeguarding people. The weaponry that is used is produced somewhere and wherever it is produced it generates a huge profit there. In other words, a missile, a bomb, a rifle or a tank that is fired or dropped in Afghanistan augments riches of private capital in United states.


The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) Report of 2018 says that an aid agency like USAID, which has undertaken a project for women in Afghanistan worth $216 million for Promoting Gender Equity in National Priority Programs (Promote), after spending $89.7 million over three years (from 2013 when it was launched) “has not fully assessed the extent to which Promote has improved the status of women in Afghanistan”. Its aim was to improve status of more than 75000 women. Over all, SIGAR’s financial audits have identified more than $414.6 million in questioned costs.

Regarding the anti-narcotics programme of USA SIGAR says that “no counterdrug program undertaken [between 2002–2017] by the United States, its coalition partners, or the Afghan government resulted in lasting reductions in poppy cultivation or opium production.”[vii] One often wonders where does all this money lands, which comes into Afghanistan or is spent on its security (ranging from the purchase of arms and ammunition to employing soldiers or its economic well being).

Creating a New Corrupt Class: Ruling through Proxy

The story of someone like Hikmatullah Shadman, an Afghan trucking-company owner, who earned more than $ 160 million dollars while contracting for the United States military is an example of how an elite formation within the Afghani society has taken place in course of war. His story was that from rags to riches. A person, who went on to become an interpreter for the western forces, got into trucking business as his contacts with them ripened[viii]. The story of Fahim Hashimy, the English language teacher who owned only a bicycle, but after he became interpreter to the American military went on to become a millionaire is only another instance. He went on to own a television company, logistics and construction companies as well as a low-cost domestic airline.[ix]

After the 9/11 attacks, it has been argued that USA was looking for local allies and many of the ex-warlords became obvious choices. The warlords have developed “a mafia-like control of jobs, security services, money, contracts and land”[x]. For instance, Somebody like “Gul Agha Sherzai, the warlord who had retaken the province with the help of the C.I.A. and Special Forces” became the Governor of Kandahar. “…His brother Abdul Raziq was a general in the Afghan Army, in charge of the airport. The Sherzai also controlled lucrative contracts to supply gravel to the American base, and Raziq’s company, Sherzai Construction and Supply, provided trucks to the Americans.” Americans had built an economy on sub-contracting and “Between 2007 and 2014, the U.S. spent eighty-nine billion dollars on contracting in Afghanistan”[xi].

It is interesting that a discourse has also been built by think tanks about how good Gul Agha Sherzai is as a governor/administrator. A Carnegie paper argues that Governor Gul Agha Sherzai

adopted a newcomer’s strategy of co-opting the tribal leadership at the district and village level through regular consultations and the provision of gifts and favors. He has leveraged these relationships, as well as ties to the U.S. military ground forces, to affirm his authority. In so doing, Sherzai has successfully delivered on a variety of priorities, from counternarcotics and reconstruction to provincial security, without necessarily advancing the cultivation of formal institutions of provincial governance[xii].

He is shown to be a person committed to democracy and allowed popular ideas to be included in his governance. The paper says that

In a democracy, people’s ideas should be collected and this is what the governor is doing. If he had started to implement all projects without considering the priorities of the people, it would have distressed people. It would not have received a positive response. He is not a dictator—he has collected people’s ideas and involved people in the decision-making process.

This runs counter to the way he promoted his own interests as shown above. Some other reports have mentioned that when he was “governor of Kandahar, Sherzai allegedly extorted large amounts of money from civilians at police checkpoints, embezzled reconstruction money, and ran protection rackets for opium traffickers. U.S. officials estimate he has a net worth of $300 million after running Kandahar. He has also been accused of murdering and torturing rivals[xiii].

The informal ways in which American capital was pumping in its money was accompanied by the development of highly corrupt formal institutions. Kabul Bank, which became symbol of “progress and modernisation in the country and held the salaries of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, policemen and government staff paid by international donors including America and Japan” nearly collapsed when a fraud scheme of over $861 million was detected. This money was diverted from the bank to “a clique of beneficiaries including the president’s brother”, a British-funded audit by Kroll found out. With a modus operandi that included 10 airline pilots on the payroll to smuggle vast sums of cash out of the country to Dubai via Kabul airport it made most of its loans to 12 individuals. It is said that “Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother, received $30.5 million… Haseen Fahim, a brother of the vice president, also received millions. Both men used loans to buy large shareholdings in the bank. The audit found the chairman, Sher Khan Farnood, and chief executive, Khalilullah Frozi, profited most by keeping two sets of books and fabricating loans to divert money to themselves and their other shareholders”. A lot of money was invested in Dubai’s property bubble[xiv].

How the Picture Emerges

As part of its modern day conquest the Western powers invade Afghanistan, obviously with the rhetoric of saving democracy from the hands of forces they themselves had created. The same powers had created the Frankenstein’s monster that went beyond their control. In fact, America built this monster bit by bit – from training in arm combat to bomb making.


It was a great day for the guerrillas in 1986 when USA gave them Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and provided an overall support to the Afghan “guerrillas” worth $2 billion. Saudi Arabia matched the American money in a joint account in Washington for missiles. Some Saudi princes on their own also funded these guerrillas. Americans went to the extent of exporting around 700 mules from Tennessee to Afghanistan. China supplied rocket launchers[xvi]. The arms that were supplied to the Mujahideens to fight a left government were subsequently used against the suppliers. Now more arms were to be produced, bought and transported to fight those forces that America had created. Hence, the only contented partner in this whole exercise has been the arms lobby, which never ceased producing bombs and weapons whether to be supplied to the Mujahideens or to the Coalition Forces. The clear winners are the arms manufacturer.

What this whole process in Afghanistan from day one did was to not allow Afghanis decide what they wanted their polity to be like. The photographic documentation of life in Afghanistan in 1960s by Dr William Podlich, a faculty of Arizona State University, revealed it to be a completely different world, at least the urban centres. From there to a situation where death dances everywhere is a world apart. And it is important that we think about whom this dance of death entertains, who foments it and who wants it to continue.

A peculiar economy, which survives on aid has come into existence. This economy is extremely hierarchized along class lines with widening gap between those who have pocketed benefits from the foreign money and those who have been not been able to do so. The wide gap is also on account of absence of any other vocation that could expand the service sector or for that matter manufacturing in the country. One often wonders if there is an intentional design on account of those who have pocketed benefits out of war in Afghanistan to let the economy be as it is. This way it will serve the armament industry and would allow the few to remain in power to do things that they want to.

What is of concern amidst all this is that innocent people get caught in this design of the western powers and local entrenched interests, which according to some are also ethnic in nature. The recent instances of Hazara villages being attacked by the Taliban is a point in the case[xvii]. Some scholars are of the view that Ashraf Ghani has very intentionally cracked down on the non-pashtun militias which have been trying to protect themselves against the Taliban because he intends to “legitimize the Taliban as a Pashtun nationalist force through ethnonationalist politics” in order to “expand his base among the radical Pashtuns” so as to muster “more votes in the next election”[xviii]. No doubt Hazaras have been at the receiving end in this conflict but the ethnic question will have to be understood in its complexity and not simply as a conflict between different ethnicities. The recent offensive against the Hazaras has been seen as an effort by Taliban to wrest those regions and put them under their control[xix] and given the past history of how Taliban thinks and what it did to them during 1996-2001 rule it will be disastrous for this community. There have been efforts to construct some idea of a Afghan nation-state and the consistent rhetoric regarding the same laced with some cocktail of democratic practices such as elections and so on are proving contradictory to what is happening on the ground. A democratic politics ought to shun away warlords, contractors and middlemen from the playground and make it an egalitarian, equal opportunity system in the best possible way so that each and every ethnicity, class and gender could participate in the building of a democratic nation. The recognition of Taliban as a political force to negotiate with is a major hurdle in that direction because such a political force feeds on conservative, sectarian and narrow vision of a world, where others (such as particular ethnicities, women in general and subversive ideas) must remain subservient to their vision and practice. Such a politics rather than being democratic would foster aggression, violence and intolerance and that would impede the process of making of the new nation. The nation cannot shun its history, it cannot teach historical amnesia but that is what Afghanistan of today is doing by manipulating their textbooks, which are funded by Americans and Indians alike. You cannot hide Hitler from children, rather tell them what historical conditions produce a Hitler and teach them to work towards not creating those conditions. That is how you shun such a tendency. Afghanistan seems to doing the opposite. It is a massive pedagogical and intellectual failure supported by those powers that believe that the nation should never get out of the peril in which it is trapped.


[i] https://www.amnesty.org.uk/how-isis-islamic-state-isil-got-its-weapons-iraq-syria


[iii] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/india-russia-support-afghan-led-afghan-owned-peace-process-deputy-nsa/articleshow/66621195.cms

[iv] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/11/afghan-peace-conference-india-shares-table-taliban-181109092419577.html

[v] https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2018/02/07/pentagon-afghan-war-costing-us-45-billion-per-year/

[vi] https://www.thenation.com/article/we-are-spending-a-trillion-on-war-and-we-need-to-own-up-to-it/

[vii] https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2018-10-30qr.pdf

[viii] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/the-man-who-made-millions-off-the-afghan-war

[ix] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32008567

[x] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-warlords-casting-a-shadow-over-afghanistan-1682660.html


[xii] https://carnegieendowment.org/files/warlords_as_bureaucrats.pdf


[xiv] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/9706093/Kabul-Bank-diverted-540-million-to-group-of-12-in-massive-fraud.html

[xv] https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jan/17/yemen.islam

[xvi] https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/18/world/arming-afghan-guerrillas-a-huge-effort-led-by-us.html

[xvii] https://thediplomat.com/2018/11/a-new-turn-in-the-talibans-war-hazarajat-under-siege/

[xviii] ibid

[xix] https://www.rferl.org/a/afghan-taliban-wants-what-it-hasn-t-been-able-to-hold-hazara-regions/29598848.html

Inequality in School Education: Are we Asking Right Questions









The University Administrators

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कहता है अपने आप को
हमे सिखाता है कैसे पढ़ाया जाए
कैसे किया जाए रिसर्च
जैसे हम है नादान

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