radicalblogger

This was a draft for a speech to be delivered at Toronto, during the South Asian Peoples' Unity Conference, 23-26 April, 2009. I spoke only about SEZs, and I talked about Lalgarh, not covered here). Comrades and friends, I am glad that I can speak here, in a gathering that includes Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis and Nepalis. In South Asia, internationalism is a very necessary sentiment, with most of our governments doing their best to turn our attention away from class conflicts to patriotism and hatred of the enemy outside the border, or the internal enemy (the Muslim in India, the Tamil in Sri Lanka). Yet the neoliberal attack has been a devastating one for us, our economies, especially for our workers and peasants. The Indian economy, touted as far better than the economies of the neighbouring countries, gives ample evidence of the destructions caused by neoliberalism. The overall attacks of neoliberalism have been disastrous, and I can speak about only one small

(Presentation at the Left Forum, New York, 18 April, 2009) I am glad to be able to speak here, at the Left Forum, about the International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest. What is not so new, of course, is the attempt by socialists to be internationalists. That is indeed one of our oldest and proudest traditions. In 1871, the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association received a letter from Calcutta, which wanted to open a branch of the International there. The identity of the author of the letter is not known. But the response proposed by Marx included a suggestion that Indians be included, indicating that the correspondent from Calcutta was probably a European. As late as the 1920s and 1930s, militant socialists from India or other colonial and semi-colonial countries could only keep sporadic contact with their fellow fighters in the developed countries, or with the Soviet Union. An international effort meant chiefly the work of people and organizations in E

(Text of a talk given at the University of Pittsburgh in April 2009) Communalism is the term used in India, and more generally throughout South Asia, to denote the politics of religious sectarianism. Communal politics in India and Pakistan are premised on one fundamental assumption: that India is a society fractured into two overarching religious communities – Hindus and Muslims. These communities are not only supposed to be separate and distinct, but also irreconcilably opposed. Their cultures, values, social practices and beliefs have little in common. Their histories are histories of discord, of mutual hostility, hatred, conflict and battles for domination. The boundaries of the communities are categorically drawn by a century of mutual antagonism. This is not a matter of one academic perception contesting another. Two incidents from the past quarter century should warn that it goes well beyond that. Between 1987 and 1992, the Bharatiya Janata Party, affiliated to the Rashtriya Sway