Anti-Islamophobia: Beware the Cynical Bandwagon

This article originally appeared in The Huffington Post

Bandwagons are infuriating, especially those that offer a claim to some sort of victimhood. Last week saw a long overdue rally against Islamophobia, after journalistic luminary Mehdi Hasan wrote a brave piece detailing his experiences at the hands of racist trolls. When he asked ‘who’s with me?’, Jonathan Freedland and Owen Jones emphatically answered his call as did numerous others on Twitter. Yet all that some right-wing commentators could manage was a shrugging ‘join the club’.

In what must have been an attempt at progressing the conversation, Daniel Hannan introduced a retrograde idea: that there is no such thing as a ‘hierarchy of hatreds’ and that ‘abuse is abuse’. By substituting the word ‘tory’ for ‘Muslim’ in a string of offensive comments, Hannan tried to highlight just how bad Tories ‘got it’ too. But substitute ‘tory’ with ‘torturer’ or ‘trafficker’ and this neat little trick quickly fails. Hannan’s argument – that hate is hate is hate – fares little better under scrutiny. A conversation about prejudice always carries the risk of being co-opted by people insisting ‘my abuse is just as bad as yours’. In this instance, that cannot be allowed to happen.

To equate tory baiting to the bigotry Muslims face is to fail to recognise that different forms of abuse have different consequences. Hasan’s most basic point was that Muslims are a marginalised minority.Despite being Britain’s largest religious minority group, they are grossly under-represented in the mainstream. Hasan is one of a few Muslim public figures and one of only two mainstream Muslim commentators. Without having others ‘with’ him to combat Islamophobia, the largely voiceless moderate Muslim community face being pushed further towards the fringes.

Hasan and Hannan are also talking about two very different kinds of ‘progressive’s prejudice’. The concept of ‘progressive’s prejudice’ has been criticised but what Hasan was referring to was the willingness of some liberal critics to allow abuses, like those carried out in Iran or by the Taliban, to tarnish the reputation of Islam. More than a billion people are adherents to the faith, not every one of them calls for the stoning of adulterers. It is this that makes the liberal dismissal of Islam as an intolerant ideology different, in kind and in substance, to a placard clutching leftie in an ‘I hate Thatcher’ t-shirt. Hasan’s aim was to warn us about the increasingly acceptable face Islamophobia has acquired and to lazily compare racism, even in its covert form, to tory bashing is to precipitate this change.

But Hannan’s argument has an even more problematic aspect. The corollary of his no-hierarchy-of-hatreds contention is that all haters are equal. No matter how abusive or who you abuse, everyone – from the EDL stalwart to the strident feminist – is an abuser. This argument is patently wrong and on two levels.

Firstly, to dismiss everyone as hater is to fail to identify legitimate domains of criticism. Hasan confesses to indulging in the occasional ad hominem attack and acknowledges his faith is not beyond question. Hannan, on the other hand, pedantically dismisses the idea that there is a difference between attacking a person and their politics as ‘sophistry’. But this difference is often obvious and always crucial. To use Hannan’s own example: viciously criticising James Delingpole’s body of work is fine, to say the same about his parenting or his children is not.

Secondly, and most gravely, by failing to single out the most egregious abuse and instead tarring everyone with the same broad brush, all Hannan does is deprive the most offensive offences of their offensiveness.

Hannan is, at other points, an odd idealist. It’s ‘unusual’ to him that ‘lefties’ don’t ‘regret’ hatred and he condemns the ‘liberal’ claim that ‘some hatreds are unconscionable [whilst] others [are] laudable’. But this is plainly wrong and by simply asking ‘is it wrong to hate Hitler?’ we collapse Hannan’s position. There is an unbridgeable gap between hating hatefulness and being hateful, the former is justifiable and the latter is not.

Hatred is not inherently wrongful. Putting word games (is intolerance of intolerance intolerant?) and intellectual cowardice (this is all just a can of worms waiting to explode) aside, the point really is a simple one: to object to bigotry is not to become bigoted yourself. Hasan’s article was as much about the way people expressed their suspicions of Islam at it was about those suspicions existing at all. There is an absolute difference between criticism and racism – in objecting to something and in being objectionable.

In the hierarchy of hatreds Islamophobia sits near the very top, alongside every other form of prejudice that attacks a person for things over which they have no control. If anti-tory sentiment features at all, it languishes near the bottom. Politics is a legitimate target for criticism and vicious criticism is all part of the dialectic. To claim to be a victim for challenges to your opinion is, frankly, shameful.

[Guest contribution] Rethinking Global Diplomacy

Talyn Rahman-Figueroa is the founder of Grassroot Diplomat, and here she explains the significance of grassroot diplomacy

In protest to Tunisian President Ben Ali’s regime, fruit-vendor Mohamad Bouazizi set fire to himself on 4^th January 2011. His death was not in vain as the uprising spurred by his extreme action triggered regime change. Given the extreme lengths that thousands of people around the world have gone to call for change, the extent to which this was successfully achieved in Tunisia makes it an isolated incident.

People all over the world, regardless of their system of government, struggle to be heard and struggle to influence social reform. Even in democracies, where newspapers are filled with headlines of people crying out for change, we see little development. The Occupy Wall Street movement saw thousands of people protest against the international capitalist system, whilst thousands of students in the UK took to the streets to protest against rising tuition fees and its effects on social mobility. From Syrian citizens to Sri Lanka’s Tamils, from American activists to China’s Tibetan monks, people in every corner of the world are crying out to be heard. With little relative change, it begs the question, is anyone listening? Does my voice matter?

There has been some recognition of the growing divide between government and their population, and concepts such as public diplomacy and civil diplomacy have sought to address this. These concepts point to government efforts to build stronger communication with the societies that elect them and to delegate greater responsibility in building positive international relations to civil society. But is this enough to bridge the disunity between civil society and political leaders?

Public diplomacy is the means by which a sovereign state communicates with foreign publics, or with publics of the state that have emigrated overseas. Not only does it provide a welcome vehicle of transparent relations between governments and people, but it also makes it easier for members of the electorate to be clued-up on the activities of its elected representatives. Nevertheless public diplomacy is increasingly becoming a buzzword that diplomats pay mere lip service to. For example, when asked if their embassy was active in public diplomacy, one diplomat answered, “Yes, we have a Twitter account”.

Citizen diplomacy differs. Ordinary citizens are given agency in building relations between different countries, and so do not have to rely on government efforts. It is described as the process whereby individual members of civil society serve as a representative overseas of the country from which they come.

The Obama administration has been very vocal about the importance of citizen diplomacy, providing citizens with valuable opportunities to champion foreign relations themselves. However, this too is a one-way process undertaken by citizens, and does not implicate foreign relations between governments where policy is actually made. Even though anyone can become a citizen diplomat, an ordinary citizen is unlikely to contribute to the strengthening of international ties.

‘Grassroot diplomacy’ is an innovation that seeks to address present diplomatic shortcomings. It is a new form of political engagement, one that opens up diplomatic dialogue to citizens at a grassroots level so that they can finally become champions of their own foreign policy.

With nations that are increasingly interconnected, economically, politically or culturally, national events almost always have international repercussions. Take the eurozone or the approach taken by our government to counteract Iran’s nuclear threat, as but a few examples. Citizens now have a much larger stake in their governments’ policies than ever before, and diplomacy needs to adapt to the globalised age in a way that acknowledges this. Grassroot diplomacy meets this need.

The Government works for us, and so we should expect to be heard. In the age of grassroots diplomacy, and with the help of diplomatic consultation groups like Grassroot Diplomat, you and I can access our governments, have a voice, and help be the change we want to see. No other form of diplomacy recognises our stake in the policies of our government, and there are no other avenues for making a case to policy-makers of what we think should be done and how we are to be affected otherwise.

Distinct from lobbying, grassroot diplomacy is reserved for members of society who lack the institutional means to press for policy change. This means that groups and individuals from the grassroots are able to promote a social good and have their policy projects recognised by members of the Government. In turn, political leaders and diplomats are able to strengthen relationships with ordinary people that they are meant to serve. As a result, grassroots diplomacy facilitates a closer mutual relationship between policy-makers and ordinary citizens and bridges the gap between civil society and political leaders. It is the new means of solving international problems that gives voice to the people who are most affected by them.

Gendercide and The West

The article was written for It’s A Girl, a film about gendercide in south Asia. It originally appeared here.

Gendercide is the unreported tragedy of our age.

I was one of those guilty of dismissing gendercide as an Asian problem. Surely, unwanted female foetuses were aborted there, in illegal clinics, not here. And surely unwanted daughters were killed there, in forgotten villages, not here. The egalitarian Shangri-La that is ‘The West’ would never allow unwanted daughters to be eliminated in this way. Surely? The shocking truth, I discovered, is that gendercide is a global tragedy.

An Oxford University study revealed that between 1995 and 2005, 1500 girls “disappeared” among Indian communities in England and Wales. Sex selective abortions are the only plausible explanation. If the study is correct, the figures mean that 1 in 10 extra girls, who should have been born according to normal birth statistics, were selectively aborted. Sex-selective abortions are illegal in the UK under the 1967 Abortion Act and yet, as the recent investigation carried out by The Telegraph exposed, families can and presumably have had pregnancies terminated here. Doctors, being secretly filmed, agreed to falsify paperwork to circumvent legal prohibitions even though they recognised the immorality of ‘female infanticide’. Sex-selective abortions are, shockingly, legal in the US and the post-communist states of east Europe all have unnatural discrepancies in their birth gender ratios.

Most, if not all, of the agreed solutions fall away when we understand gendercide as a global problem. Activists have always spoken of the need to economically empower women, to inform women of their rights and to improve legal enforcements. These are all the solutions to problems that don’t exist in the US, Australia or the UK. Those fighting to end gendercide have always kept faith in modernisation as a force that will uproot the “backward culture” of son-preference. But modernisation, though necessary, has been proved to be insufficient.

Gendercide is a problem of supply and demand. Modernisation has failed to root-out foetal gender-preference and developments in technology have facilitated femicide. With sex determination now possible at seven weeksonline, new technologies have had the perverse effect of decreasing reproductive liberty rather than can increasing reproductive control. Logic suggests then, that the process of combatting gendercide must be inverted: eliminate supply before tackling demand. This though, might not be the answer either.  Campaigners warn that those extreme enough to want a gender-selective abortion would “always a find a way”. As Kishwar Desai highlights, Indian families from the UK are prepared to travel to India to end pregnancies, where illegal abortions can be procured for a small price. It is impossible to know how many women each year go abroad to eliminate female foetuses. What is certain is that driving these abortions abroad or underground is counter to all interests.

It’s not only the absence of solutions that complicates the fight against gendercide in The West. Abortion – and controls on it – remains a fraught issue. The risk of talking about gendercide in The West is that it becomes engulfed by the abortion debate. The difficulty, as Cristina Odone notes, is that combatting gender-selective abortion ‘smacks of pro-life’. It is entirely consistent with being pro-choice to argue that gendercide is the not-too-remote consequence of permissive abortion controls. A hijacking of the anti-gendercide cause by either the pro-life or pro-choice lobby would be a huge setback.

Abortion and gendercide are distinct issues and if we are to end gendercide, we must constantly remind ourselves of this distinction. The routine elimination of female foetuses, solely because they are not male, is something we must all work to end.

Gendercide is an issue in relation to which our first and last question must always be: how do we end it? All manner of policy initiatives have been tried. Over concerns of sex-selection, the Council of Europe went as far as to suggest that doctors must now refuse to tell parents the gender of their baby. But technology and culture undermine policy at every stage and no legislation can combat a global cultural malaise. As Evan Grae Davis, It’s A Girl’s director has said, gendercide is one among many issues that is “greater than any single organisation can fight alone”. It is for this reason that the work of Shadowline Films, and similar projects, is vital: where policy falls short, awareness and activism must fill the gap.

Ram Mashru

[Guest Contribution] Putin’s ‘re-election’ faces empowered opposition

“I promised you we would win, and we won. Glory to Russia!” Those were the words of Vladimir Putin on the night his victory was declared. He now has a mandate to rule for six more years and, if the next elections are as disgracefully unfair as last month’s, it is likely he will rule for much longer.

Even if the elections had been free and fair, there was little chance Putin would have suffered a defeat. Under Putin, votes during the Russian presidential elections were always a vote for the Kremlin, the choice was simply between a direct or indirect vote. Putin’s electoral opponents were mediocre and unelectable, a motley crew of reactionaries, political dinosaurs and cowards. Perversely, pro-Putin sections accused credible opposition candidates of electoral discrepancies and so prevented them from running.

Putin once enjoyed the reputation of a pragmatist. He was portrayed as a man able to clean up the mess left by the violence and instability of the nineties. Now, there remains little doubt that Putin is an autocrat. In 2010, Wikileaks revealed that US diplomats refered to Putin’s Russia as “a virtual mafia state”, where “democracy has disappeared” and political corruption is rampant. Indeed under his rule, Russia was run by a criminal cartel of self-interested ex-KGB bureaucrats. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that his security forces have harrassed and, it is strongly suspected, murdered journalists; appointed sadistic sociopaths to the head of regional governments and his government also committed, what is slowly being accepted as, war crimes in Chechnya.

The line of the Putinist cabal and their supporters, including apologists in the West, is that Russia has no history of democracy, that the Russian people prefer being ruled by authority rather than be governed by popular will. The argument is that Russians have no desire to live in a free and secure society. That reason, liberalism and democracy have never succeeded in Russia is not because Russians harbour some self-hating desire to be subjugated. Rather, it is because whenever these ideals have come close to being realised, they have been stifled by violence and intimidation.

So what do the opposition do, now Putin has been re-elected?

Western leaders, while stressing the need to investigate allegations of electoral irregularties, have avoided outright condemnation. Therefore, first, those outside the country must start condemning Putin’s rule outright. For too long Putin has been allowed to continue in his criminal activity without Western leaders or expatriates openly criticising him. Russian opposition to Putin is hampered by its lack of a coherent and effective critique of Putin and the opposition needs the emboldening impact of foreign leaders taking a strong stance.

Secondly the Russian opposition must continue to take to the streets, as they have begun to do. Russia has a long history of toppling autocracy through popular, peaceful protest and Russian protesters have never been better equipped. The internet remains relatively free of state control and the opposition must use this to their advantage. In the context of state regulated press, the opposition can use the internet to to articulate their dissidence, to organise protests and to develop networks of support around the world. But, whatever happens, the opposition must challenge him, protest, challenge his rule.

Opposition to Putin is strong among the city-dwelling middle classes. It is from the remaining socially and geographically disparate groups that Putin draws his support. Putin announced his victory with tears rolling down his cheeks. Much was made of his tears – his tears of fear. Putin is scared, scared that the informed and active urban classes have woken up to the damage he has done to the country and woken up to his corrupt government. They are beginning to become cynical of his empty patriotism, his ridiculous cult of personality, and increasingly aware of the contempt he feels for them. Increasingly, Putin realises that his time is almost up.

As the third term of President Vladimir Putin looms, Russia stands at a crossroads. The potential success of this third term as president is, of course, up for debate. Some dictators have made concessions when they find their backs against the wall and of course Putin will do everything he can to stay ‘in power’. But the choice to be made at the crossroads is stark – either Putin will clamp down, becoming the tyrant he has shown the signs of becoming or he will be deposed by the Russian opposition. Between despotism and deposition, there is no middle ground.

Oliver Hotham is an undergraduate reading History at Queen Mary, University of London. He writing interests encompass politics, both domestic and international. He tweets @OliverHotham

The Rushdie debacle is an indictment of India’s democracy

This article has been published in The Independent.

It is the complaint of the complacent to argue, “it’s all their fault” and in India the opportunity to argue “it’s them” is ever-present. But with the dust almost settled on the Rushdie fiasco, it’s apparent that this complaint against India’s government is not being made often enough.

The handling of the Rushdie fiasco has led to the accusation that the government showed scorn for democratic values. But a stronger charge can be made. The fiasco exposes the government’s willingness to abdicate its duties to protect freedom of expression and maintain law and order. Much worse than scorn, India’s government has shown disregard for its democratic responsibilities.

The issue was only ostensibly a law and order one. Cutting off Salman’s video-link was necessary to avert the threat of violence, we were told. But a detail in David Remnick’s blog is telling: “The security apparatus [at the festival] was…enormous”, well before Rushdie was due to arrive. Could this “enormous” security deployment not have protected a citizen against threats of “elimination” from, what transpired to be, fictional assassins? And if the concern of the Rajasthani and State administration were that the protests would get out of hand, where was the condemnation and where were the appeals for peace?

Religiosising the debacle is another distraction. Muslim leaders and groups have insisted their protests were always going to be peaceful. The way to solve the intractable conflict between the right to say what you please and the right to be respected is not to entertain more theorising. Debate is necessary but in this instance, redundant. India’s legal system has reached a satisfactory compromise on the issue. The penal code provides a right to free expression unless the speaker intends to incite.  Rushdie’s presence, physical or virtual, was plainly not intended to incite and so religious sensibilities, according to the law, were in no need of protection.

Here, Nick Cohen’s point about power resounds: “few admit that what makes liberal democracies liberal is that “power” will not throw you in prison [for speaking freely]”. Freedom of expression exists therefore only to the extent that the State will protect it. In this instance, the “power” of the radical, militant few was allowed to stifle free discussion because of the absence of political will. This apathy amounts to an abdication of the responsibility, shared by all democratic governments, to safeguard the right of free speech.

The most pernicious implication of the Rushdie debacle is self-censorship. As Nick Cohen points out in his timely book, fear is the greatest threat to open discussion. Extremists, by definition, flout both the moral consensus and the law. The refusal to apprehend the threat of violence and the patent indifference shown towards free expression by India’s government risks establishing a dangerous precedent. The risk is one of fundamentalists filling the power vacuum left by the absence of political will.

Rushdie’s diagnosis is entirely correct. What his silencing marks is the “decline in the liberty of ordinary citizens to engage in discourse”. The failure of free expression in the Rushdie debacle, however, is not absolute. It’s ironic that in silencing Salman at Jaipur, extremists have catapulted his international profile and have pushed The Satanic Verses once again to the fore of international political and literary consciousness. The victim here is India’s free and democratic society.

The most peculiar thing about the Rushdie ‘black farce’ is that Rushdie, since the ban on his book, has entered the country and attended the Festival without opposition. Salman was not being self-effacing when accepting “the vast majority of Indian Muslims…don’t give a damn whether I come or go”. What is different now? The imminent Uttar Pradesh elections. The suspicion is that the ruling Congress party refused to protect Salman’s rights as a citizen out of fear of alienating Muslim voters. The Rushdie debacle rests therefore on the fact of a government reneging on its present responsibilities to focus on future prospects. What the Congress party have demonstrated is political opportunism of the worst kind.

The Rushdie debacle is the kind of national crisis that draws conspiracy theorists and cries of foul government agendas. Even as we dismiss those, the central issue has been abstracted. Protecting the rights of the citizen, maintaining law and order and safeguarding free speech are all basic and fundamental responsibilities of democratic governments. On each account, in the Rushdie debacle, India’s administration failed. The charge is more than one of simply showing scorn for democratic values, the Indian government’s failures amount to political abnegation.

Ram Mashru

The Abu Qatada judgment undermines the fight against torture

This article has been published in The Huffington Post.

The UK for the last 10 years has tried to extradite Abu Qatada, a terror suspect, to Jordan where he faces trial on charges of terrorism. The European Court of Human Rights however ruled last week that such a deportation is illegal because Qatada is likely to face an unjust trial. On these sparse facts, hysterical rights sceptics have re-energised their attack on human rights, as Trojan horse being used to undermine Parliament’s sovereign will. But, it is the human rights community, not panicky politicians, that should be alarmed by the Court’s decision.  The decision is one in which the fight against torture suffers a mighty blow.Chief sceptic is Philip Johnston for whom the judgment was an instance of human rights being manipulated by a terrorist to “fool” Britain. Of all the MPs with an opinion on the matter it’s unsurprising that Johnston quotes Raab, a fellow libertarian and rights-sceptic. It serves as evidence of their thoughtless hostility to human rights that they both miss the implications of the case and miss it so widely.

The Court, for present purposes, decided two issues and in doing so, established a far-reaching rule, from which it carved a narrow exception. The Court ruled that extraditions, to countries suspected of carrying out torture, were lawful provided diplomatic assurances had been procured. By so deciding, the Court ruled in favour of the UK Government. Indeed it praised the detail and depth of the understanding our government had agreed with their Jordanian counterparts. Put another way, a diplomatic assurance is now all that is needed to safeguard a convict from the threat of torture.

This rephrasing is hardly needed to expose the gaping flaw in the Court’s reasoning. Diplomatic assurances, essentially gentleman’s agreements, have now been elevated to the status of substantive rights protections. Far from subverting the will of the Parliament, the Court have struck a death blow to efforts to expose ‘torture treaties’ between states, to the effort to uncover the practice of torture and to the effort to condemn States for turning a blind eye. In what is perhaps its most politically deferential judgment yet, the Court have relegated all concerns about the torture of terror suspects by placing complete and blind faith in the invisible processes of international relations.

Despite the diplomatic assurance, the Court ruled Abu Qatada’s deportation would be illegal under Article 6, which enshrines the right to a fair trial. By taking into account the real risk that evidence obtained by torture would be used to incriminate Abu Qatada, the Court reasoned that to allow the deportation would be to countenance an “immoral, illegal” and “unreliable” trial. Without the risk of corrupt evidence being used against him, Qatada would have been deported and so potential article 6 infringements constitute a narrow defence to the far-reaching diplomatic assurances rule. It is this narrow exception that has been typically mischaracterised by Johnston and is ilk.

There is rightful consternation among human rights groups. The diplomatic assurances rule amounts to an “alarming setback” according to Julia Hall of Amnesty International, and represents taking “one step forward, two steps back”. The “positive development” of the Article 6 exception, she argued, was “eclipsed” by the Court’s decision to substitute diplomatic assurances for binding legal obligations. States, particularly in the anti-terror context, have eroded prohibitions on torture and the European Court’s decision amounts to a “green light” on securing “unreliable” assurances in the place of legal guarantees. Human Rights Watch and Liberty have echoed these criticisms.

Several options remain open in the Qatada case. The quickest solution would be to seek assurances that improper evidence would not be used. Alternatively, there is nothing preventing Qatada going on trial in the UK and Shami Chakrabati has urged that this be done “without delay”. Or, the UK Government could appeal the European Court’s decision. Doing so will add a few more years to Qatada’s already 7 year internment. It should be noted that Qatada has spent this time in the confines of a jail cell, without charge.

The law of human rights is, at its core, the process of balancing competing demands. Abu Qatada’s case is but one example of the effort to weigh the demands of national security against the rights of the individual. With the diplomatic assurances innovation, the Court has eased the process of deporting terror suspects to places where the risk of torture is both real and high. In doing so, they have abdicated their apolitical mediating role and devolved responsibility for protecting potential torture victims to the whispered negotiations of governmental corridors.

Ram Mashru

The lessons to be learned from India’s unsung protests

The obligatory 2012 predictions have been made and the commentariat are unanimously forecasting doom and gloom. Pessimism, when rife, becomes contagious but these lamentations should be reserved in the case of India, where the greatest political movement since its independence is underway.

India’s anti-corruption protests have gone largely unreported and John Pilger’s recent article is an example. He gravely predicts that India will experience its own Arab spring and yet not once cites the anti-corruption protestsrippling across the country.

With pervasive official corruption, sclerotic parliamentary opposition, an inept Prime Minister and an increasingly menacing financial class, the anti-graft movement faces a near Herculean struggle. But the new year marks new beginnings and now is a chance to reflect on the pertinence of India’s anti-corruption movement.

Anna Hazare, the movement’s elderly figurehead, and the anti-graft movement have returned to the political fore after the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India’s parliament, failed to pass an anti-corruption law. Parliament is now in recess and the bill will not be reconsidered until March.  Hazare, who threatened to resume his fast in response, has fallen ill and amid claims of changing tack the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement has begun to stagnate. Yet the movement is, for several reasons, a strategic success.

Foremost, the IAC movement is a vindication of organised peaceful protest as an effective political tool. The movement has served as a lens through which focus on corruption has intensified and the pressure on parliament increased. Passing a LokPal (public ombudsman) bill has been tried seven times already since 1968. In the long and old fight to combat graft, the anti-corruption movement now dominates India’s political and popular discourse like never before. In a society so divided by capitalism, caste and creed the movement has become a rallying point.

Hazare’s threats to fast unto death have spearheaded the Jan LokPal bill through India’s parliament. Objectionable as it may be to hold a legislature to ransom with the threat of starvation, in the context of India’s inert democracy such galvanising acts of self-sacrifice are unsurprising and necessary. Though the Rajya Sabah has reached an impasse over the bill’s scope, the movement is making material progress: 21 corrupt ministers from BJP (India’s nefarious nationalist party) have been sacked and major corruption scandals have been exposed.

Parallels can be drawn with OLSX: combatting corruption is as much about changing financial and institutional attitudes as the reform of Britain’s financial sector. And corruption poses the same threat to the livelihoods of Indians as austerity measures. And like Occupy, the anti-graft movement has disavowed representative politics, rejecting associations with politicians and refusing to set up a rival political party.  Yet the IAC movement has been a much greater strategic success.

When the anti-graft protests and the occupy movement are juxtaposed, the former establishes two things. Firstly, political protests (within democracies) do better when working with, as opposed to outside of, political processes (I have criticised the failures of OLSX elsewhere). Secondly, the anti-graft movement shows that reform by increment yields more than absolutist demands for wholesale reform.  The relative failures of OLSX, having achieved little beyond engaging our national conscience, attest to these lessons.

There are further points of contrast. Occupy London has sought to lead by example with its non-hierarchical structure. The anti-corruption protests demonstrate that more conventional models remain viable. Movements need figureheads in order to be effective and to an extent, the mere fact of Hazare’s leadership has facilitated the movement’s success. By capturing the national spirit he has mobilised a cross-section of India’s population, transforming their long held frustrations into active protest. In the process, Hazare has packed out stadiums with supporters lending their voice whilst, in morbid worship, watching an elderly activist waste away.

But where movements attract criticism, figureheads attract scorn. The risk with Hazare, who is both leader and martyr, is one of the person overshadowing the protests. Most divisively, the movement have entertained the claim that Hazare is Gandhi’s heir. Gandhi’s legacy is often invoked in times of civil protest but with Hazare, Gandhi’s image has been misappropriated. He is Gandhian in his politics and his physique but not in his achievements. India’s press have denounced him but in rightly denouncing the comparison the press have wrongly denounced his cause. When criticising Hazare’s dogmatism, India’s press have elided the distinction between his motives and means. The anti-corruption movements is the product of a popular consensus and Hazare’s role is purely catalytic.

The movement remains far short of its targets and the IAC have resorted to the baffling step of asking for suggestions as to what to do next. And though the LokPal bill is yet to become law with regional elections on the horizon the movement, it is hoped, will manifest at the ballot box. Political gains notwithstanding, the scale of the movement is unprecedented and a culture shift and the protest’s practices are harbingers of imminent improvement.

An Indian Spring there may well be, but not for the oft-repeated reasons Pilger lists. India’s poor and working class have long been assaulted by a Molotov cocktail of having their land ‘recolonised’ by corporations, of discrimination and of a denial of basic services. If anything will catalyse a political revolution in India it will be the anti-graft movement. The IAC movement is neither the first nor most imaginative attempt at weeding out the deep roots of corruption in India’s society. But there has never been a more opportune moment and success in eradicating institutional corruption will topple the first domino of India’s many structural evils. If the domino falls, it will have done so by the force of popular will working with and within the law. This is the lesson India’s unsung protests offer.

Ram Mashru

Obama’s Bush-era Bargain

This article originally appeared in Prospect Magazine.

Earlier this month, Obama refused to veto the National Defence Authorisation Act (NADA), which the House of Representatives later passed by a 283-136 majority. The act—which brings into force the indefinite detention of terror suspects before trial, eases the process of rendering American citizens to foreign regimes, and makes the closure of Guantánamo Bay more difficult—marks a new chapter in Obama’s erosion of civil liberties.

Although the White House had threatened to veto the bill, the official line now is that sufficient changes were made to the bill, following the president’s request, to avoid a veto. The reforms gave him the power to grant a waiver in individual cases so that defendants could be tried in civilian courts. But the legislation prohibits spending money in the civilian trials of suspected terrorists, rendering the waiver worthless.

The White House also insisted that, if implementing the NADA jeopardized the rule of law, Congress would be expected to work “quickly and tirelessly” to reverse the damage. But oppressive laws spawn miscarriages of justice, the effects of which persist long after legislation is tweaked.

Commentators have been quick to note the timing of Obama’s volte-face. With less than a year until the presidential election, Obama is being accused of capitulating to Republican factions in an attempt to be seen as tough on terror. But groups across the political spectrum have opposed the act and critics include the justice and defence secretaries and the directors of the CIA and the FBI.

Their refusal to veto the NADA marks a new chapter in a civil liberties record already tarnished by the failure to close Guantánamo Bay, the expansion of Bagram, the detention facility, in Afghanistan, the refusal to investigate or prosecute Bush-era officials complicit in torture, the approval of drone strikes on US citizens and the blocking of numerous public-interest lawsuits challenging presidential abuses.

According to Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, Obama “has proved a disaster” for the “civil liberties cause” in the US. But the implications are much greater. Obama has struck the Bush-era bargain, deciding fundamental rights are a small price to pay for safety. Like Bush, he has failed to learn the post 9/11 lesson that it is counter to national security interests to erode civil liberties. Republicans and Democrats alike have criticised NADA as an affront to American values. And on the international stage, the NADA will damage America’s reputation, delegitimise efforts to combat terrorism and, of course, provide fodder for those who accuse the US of hypocrisy and rights-imperialism.

Ram Mashru

Christopher Hitchens – What Should His Legacy Be?

It’s almost tragicomic that only death brings people the recognition they deserved whilst alive. This is true for Christopher Hitchens who, though increasingly famous in his last days, will only now have his vast catalogue read by the many it should already have reached. As eulogies mount, praising a distinguished writer’s wit and wisdom, one can’t help but wonder what Hitchens would have made of them all.

Before the charge is made, let me declare now that sycophancy is as disrespectful to the memory of the dead as indifference. Death demands honesty and people must be remembered for who they were, not for who we would have liked them to be. Hitchens himself would have wanted no more and no less.

Grief can gild memories with generosity and Hitchens has, in some obituaries, been likened to Voltaire and Orwell. But these comparisons are unsustainable and on two levels.

Firstly, there’s the banal fact that history has yet to certify Hitchens’ work. Even so, Hitchens was many things but philosopher and social commentator he was not. Despite his self-assurance “Hitch” was a humble man and after being flattered by these comparisons he would have swiftly dismissed them. Voltaire, Orwell and Wilson were his inspirations, not his equals and Hitchens said as much in his most recent published exchange.

Secondly, “intellectual” seems an oddly ill-fitting “job title” for someone whose aim it was to provoke us into discussion. It wasn’t Hitchens’ stated aim to enlighten, elucidate or educate. He didn’t cultivate knowledge for the sake of being knowledgeable and Hitchens is better understood as an intellectual pragmatist. The understanding that knowledge should be used not stored is characteristic of Hitchens’ work. What we got when we read or heard from Hitchens was Hitchens. Quotes, facts and arguments were all deployed to inform, test and express his opinions. Erudition was simply a by-product of this reflection.

Notwithstanding the claim that Hitchens doesn’t belong to the esteemed group of enlightenment figures he so admired, we must not diminish his accomplishments as a commentator in an era increasingly defined by sound bites and twitter.

For aspiring writers Hitchens is a role model. To present journalists he should serve as an example. In both capacities what Hitchens represents is the pursuit of perfecting the writer’s craft. During his career, his writing was criticised for at times being boring and at others being overstated. Nevertheless this process of refinement was as important a message for Hitchens as the indictment of religion or the dismissal of despots. It is for this reason that poor journalism has never been more intolerable than when lazy hands wrote lazy obituaries for a man whose ability as a writer deserved better.

It’s offensive to the rigour of his work to describe him as having “scribbled” articles. To do so is to practice the poor journalism that Hitchens’ prolific and incisive work cast a deep and dark shadow over. And to describe Hitchens as a “devout atheist” is to use the sort of obvious and inaccurate oxymoron that would have triggered his irascible rage. But the BBC we were worse, facilely describing Hitchens as “controversial”. “Controversial”, through overuse, is at risk of becoming meaningless. It’s an adjective fit for “X Factor scandals”, scandal being another overused hyperbole. Of course the context in which words are used is important but Hitchens was masterful enough to appreciate that connotations are crucial too. “Controversial” both misstates and understates what Hitchens achieved. More than controversial, Hitchens was an iconoclast. He didn’t merely provoke disagreement; he shook complacently held assumptions at their very foundations. Hitchens deserves respect for relying on reason, not rhetoric and it is for this reason that in a debate Martin Amis said he would back Hitchens over Cicero. If I were on my bottom dollar, I’d do the same.

Between his politics and his prose we must not overlook his personality. Lynn Barber described him as “one of the greatest conversationalists of our age”. He could also, with what Ian Parker at the New Yorker called “the sudden, cutthroat withdrawal of charm”, wound deeply. Youtube is full of videos of “Hitch-slaps”, capturing instances where Hitchens deployed both wisdom and wit to strike down opponents.

What of his legacy? Jason Cowley in the New Statesman predicted that Hitchens would be remembered for his prodigious output, his swaggering, rhetorical style and his lifestyle. I’m inclined to be less pessimistic. Peter Hitchens said that courage is the quality that best defined his brother. To that I would add clarity. Combined, Hitchens’ legacy is obvious and simple but powerful.

Throughout, he urged us to be courageous: to test our beliefs and to voice our convictions. Equally he encouraged us to be clear, not merely when expressing our courage, but when deciding to what our courage should relate. I’ll explain. That Hitchens knew himself is obvious to anyone who begins to read his work. If Hitchens served as an example for anything, it would be introspection. What might seem like hubris in his writing is instead an acute self-awarness, the kind of unapologetic commitment to one’s views that results from having defined oneself. When reading or listening to Hitchens’, this clarity has the effect of a mirror, forcing us to reflect ourselves on our views. It is this that gives value to his courage and it is this that should be Hitchens’ legacy.

Ram Mashru

My Tram Experience: Time To Be Constructive

Viral videos of racist public outbursts should prompt us to reflect on how best to tackle pernicious social problems.

It’s frustrating how short the lifespans of viral videos are. It’s only been five days since the ubiquitous video hit youtube and the novelty has already been exhausted. Internet trolls have trolled, news reporters reported and commentators commented on a story that’s beginning to feel out of date.

But the conversation has been so predictable, so uninspiring. The tram rant served as a nationwide reminder that unprovoked, unashamed racism still exists. Emboldened by this jolt to the national memory, bloggers hurl themselves at their keys and recount their stories, complete with racist slurs, childhood identity crises and adult self-affirmation. Articles abundant in rhetorical questions invite readers to share their own troubled pasts in violent detail.

This mass catharsis, heart-rending as it may be, is just so…fruitless and it’s a distraction. Instances like Emma West’s outburst are rare opportunities for us to be constructive. By being offended ethnic minorities achieve nothing, but by posing questions the conversation can progress.

Sunny Hundal’s terrific piece in The Guardian marks a start. He notes that the law can be the worst possible way of dealing with situations like these and skips through the obvious reasons why: the law is often ineffective, legislation can be a blunt tool, laws can discriminate against minorities and arrest will only stifle racism, not eliminate it. He oversimplifies the case, but with his last point he hits the proverbial nail on the proverbial head.

I don’t accept th the law has no role to play and we must be careful not to elide crucial legal distinctions. She was arrested for racial harassment and no one can argue that there are no laudable reasons for criminalising hateful conduct. If Emma West’s rant were ageist, sexist or homophobic the legal response should be the shame. Law has a role in regulating our conduct, in clarifying society’s accepted morals, in sending a message and the message being sent is simply this: you cannot harass others. But complacent observers are not sensitive to this distinction and so it’s Hundal’s last point that needs to be explored.

Emma West is ignorant and historically wrong but she’s not an anomaly. The deterrent effect of an arrest will only drive those like her behind walls. The corollary of this self-censorship is that it makes her a rallying point, a martyr to the self-declared warriors fighting the immigration invasion.

We need to understand that it’s only once bigots raise their heads above the parapet that they can be counted and only then can they can be asked to explain their prejudice. It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that liberal societies protect themselves from the threat posed by extremism by exposing it. The tram experience should encourage us all to foster an open environment in which more people like Emma West air their grievances, so that more people like Emma West can be held to account.

One of the first commenters on Hundal’s article simply says that Emma West shouldn’t be given ‘the oxygen of publicity’. To ignore racism is to neglect it, and allow it to fester. It’s inherently counter-productive.

Had Hundal been on the tram, he’d have let her know that he was English and then gone back to pretending not to care. I object to this defiant apathy. Racists need to be engaged; Emma West must be criticised and there is nothing more shameful than public condemnation. There is no greater mirror forcing you to reflect, than national criticism. There is no better way to learn the extremity of your views than to be drowned out by a tidal wave of liberal, tolerant disapproval.

Ram Mashru