DAY FIVE TED INDIA: FOOD FOR THOUGHT

November 8th 2009, Mysore

In a climax of compelling speakers, TED India got everyone out of bed (no mean feat when the final night was such a riotous affair) and back into their increasingly delirious brains. A lack of sleep, a lack of food because there was just no time to eat, somehow the intellectual sustenance remained the food for thought. The ability to let us listen to stories. Stories which have the power to transform.

The girl inside

I have to start with Eve Ensler, and her vibrant description of what it means to be a girl in “I am an emotional creature”. She roused the stage with her passionate description of a society which had stolen its girl side, both men and women, and left itself inept and broken by placing value only on those hardened characteristics which associate themselves with male victory. The language that correlates vulnerability and emotion with weakness has been displaced. The language that allows men to sell women and their daughters has been strengthened. The verb “to please” which is encouraged  in women from such a young age that they forget to defy, create, activate has been planted. Eve’s declaration that being a girl is so powerful that the world has had to teach everyone not to be like that struck a strong chord. She talked about the mass rape of women in the DRC, and their use of taboos and traditions to force peace talks onto the table. She talked about the Masai father who was ready to sell his daughter to an old man for some cows and blankets, and disfigure and disempower her with mutilation as part of the bidding, a father who was proud of his daughter when she ran away to seek help and returned a year later, educated and with new ambition, promising never to cut her whilst she promised to fight her father’s corner always.

Soft power and the cellphone revolution

Soft power.

The subject of Shashi Tharoor’s talk, a charismatic compelling political speaker who painted a picture of a world in which India’s ability to use its influence and values to attract others could be a force for good. He described India as a country which works  partly because of its government, and partly in spite of it. A country which has been selling fifteen million mobile phones per month, emerging from a country where the phone was a rare luxury just a couple of decades ago. Who is carrying those cellphones, he asked? The man who climbs a coconut palm to bring down the right number of coconuts, the fisherman out at sea who can get the best price for his wares in the best market, and the farmers (who have been committing suicide in mass droves) who also can find a way to sell their produce more efficiently.

 

Soft power. The ability of Bollywood and Indian music and television to have the same influence that MTV, Hollywood and McDonalds have had for the United States. The popularity of Indian entertainment, for example, in Afghanistan where the country stands still enough for robbers to know when to strike, as everyone sits down to watch the Indian equivalent of Eastenders. The economic value of Indian restaurants in the UK who now employ more than the coal and mining industries together.  

He talked about Indian influence in the region through its pluralist democracy, in a country which an Italian-origin Roman Catholic woman, Sonia Gandhi, was elected with a Sikh Prime Minister, sworn in by a Muslim President. That, he said, was India being itself, sustained above all else by its pluralist democracy.

He is right, of course, and he used the power to tell stories compellingly. They are all true, although as previous articles will tell you, I fear that India’s ability to propagate is pluralist democracy without coming to terms with its State-sponsored violence and failure to account to itself and its people is also its biggest barrier to progress. You can’t please all the people all of the time, but you have to ensure at the very least that you don’t kill them.

 The power of children to transform society

Soft power, through Sesame Street, or Galli Galli Sim Sim, changing children’s lives across the sub-continent.  Soft power through the Riverside school in Ahmedabad, set up by Kiran Sethi whose favourite word “contagious”, in these days of swine flu, has inspired her to allow children to make a change, shutting down the city’s main streets once a month to allow it to be transformed into a children’s playground, inspiring children to teach their illiterate parents in rural Rajasthan to read and write, bringing children out onto the streets to demand an end to child poverty by making the pupils roll incense for eight hours so they understand what it feels like.

The power of children and sport, developed by Matthew Spacie who founded Magic Bus, who in searching for a way to engage girls in the slums, developed a football league for their mothers, which led to the grandmothers demanding their won league and ultimately which led to them coaching the very daughters they initially sought to engage.

Ring the bell and end domestic violence

Bell Bajao. An advertising campaign encouraging neighbours to ring the bell when they hear the strains and shouts of domestic violence from the next door house or street. Step in. Help. Don’t leave everything to the State.

Will you change my world?

Change the world, or let the person next to you change it for you, if you are open enough, said  Balasubramanian, an installation artist, painter and sculptor who sought to answer philosophy through sculpture hanging off the walls of a gallery. How do shadows define our sense of self? Where there is dark, must there be light?

And where there is blindness, individuals with passion can bring light to thousands of people in one of the most inspiring talks of the session. Ravilla Thulasiraj whose Aravinda eye hospitals have been inspired by the founder’s philosophy to create a McDonals of eye care, breaking down access barriers to the poor in innovative ways that reduce budgets and costs dramatically, provide transportation where required for hospital treatment and using technology to deliver telemedicine in the most rural places.

The power of serenity

And finally, to His Holiness, the 17^th Gyalwang Karmapa, who brought serenity to our twisting minds at the end of the conference, looking for positivity out of negativity. Talking about the Bamian Buddha statues which had been felled by the Taliban, he talked of looking for the positive, as though the action may bring about some peace between two religious communities helping them to understand each other without the barrier of a physical wall.

He told us that we had taken a million collective breaths this week, and although we may not see coarse changes, we needed to watch out for the subtle changes. The little symbols of happiness in every breathe that we took. He asked us to take the good, the momentum, the positivity of the fortune of such a diverse group of people coming together to form a strong approach, and to plant those qualities in every corner of the world.

And so these are not the articles to consider more deeply the consequences both of what we heard and what we did not hear. This is the place simply to note some of the people who left the biggest footprints this week. It has been an intense learning experience from which I am bound to take the positive.

The future beckons and India is ready to take her place at the front of it. There are people ready to seek creative solutions to seemingly intractable problems that perpetuate and expand poverty, whilst recognising that there is a long way to go. There are people all over the world who seek a common framework of inspiration.

I am not ready to leave, but I am certainly ready to sleep.

I am all for the soft power of new friendships and transforming ideas.  Stories which have the power to transform.

 I am a girl, an emotional creature.

Food for thought, indeed.

DAY FOUR TED INDIA: THE POSITIVES OF NEGATIVE

6th November 2009, Mysore

Brutal bootcamp for the brain.

Sleep less than a handful of hours, minds spinning with ideas, wake up with black coffee, too early for breakfast, meet several new strangers as you wander through the lawns (“though don’t walk on the grass”) campus and get thrown in straight at the deep end with another ten hour day of talks. Some more inspiring than others, some more relevant than others.

It is always easy to find a negative, the speakers you liked less, the styles of presentation or the ideas which strike one, perhaps, as rather ordinary. So, in my write-up of today’s TED India, I venture to take the lesson which many of the speakers gave us in their presentations. The positives of negative.

Sex trafficking and one woman’s straight-down-the-line lecture

No doubt about it, one speaker today ripped out the hearts of the auditorium with her unemotional, straight-down-the-line explanation of how she came to be a passionate advocate for the cause of women whose lives are devastated by commercial sexual exploitation through trafficking. In a society where the emotional and physical trauma of rape is compounded by society’s ostracisation of the victims, Sunita Krishnan stood before a mixed Indian and international audience and told of how her gang rape by eight men at age fifteen led her, after years of isolation and social exclusion, to found her centre Prajwala (Eternal Flame) where victims of trafficking are brought after being rescued, in order to rehabilitate them psychologically, physically and economically and in order to prevent second generation prostitution. Many such survivors of these disgusting ordeals have been forcibly hardened to the worst of male excesses so that they find it comparatively easy to work in traditionally male domains such as plumbing, masonry and carpentry, following training. This is an avenue which Sunita’s centre will explore in order to re-validate women in society.

Many women and children, both boys and girls, are brutalised to a horrific degree. She spoke of young girls aged under five being found by the side of railway tracks with their intestines hanging out as a result of the damage done to them. Who are these men without humanity, you may ask? Her stark response was brothers, uncles, fathers, friends. An equally serious question hangs over everyone. What kind of society excludes women and children who are the victims of its own blindness and brutality, who choose to ignore or prefer not to see? The same society which may donate money to the centre, but prefer that the rehabilitated and re-trained women are not brought into their homes and workplaces. A society which prefers to validate the perpetrators than the victims?

That is why what most impressed me today, beyond anything else, was not necessarily the $100,000 dollars which was raised in about five minutes at the end of Sunita’s lecture, by members of the audience who simply stood up and offered money to help the Centre which is about to be evicted because nobody wants them in their space even at exorbitant rental prices, but by Google, who offered jobs to the Centre’s top students, a gesture that was directed straight into the heart of the problem.

The utility of Google Maps 

Google, often criticised, but who were praised by another short speaker on the use of Google Maps to draw areas in Burma which had been effectively closed to post-cyclone Nargis relief since the UN had no co-ordinates until many volunteers used Google maps to change the environment.

“The last mile problem”

“The last mile problem”, that was another topic tackled by the first speaker of the day, Sendhil Mullainathan, as he showed the need for lateral thinking and the employment of psychology, marketing and science in confronting some of the most basic, but endemic problems which perpeutuate poverty. What are the choices which people make which keep them at the bottom of the pile, or under it?  He described oral rehydration sachets as being potentially the most important medical advance of the century in a country where child mortality has been brought down from 24% to 6.5% but where nevertheless there remain 400,000 diarrhoea-related deaths every year. And yet, why do women not re-hydrate their children when they suffer from diarrheoa, he asks?  Using an example of a leaky bucket, he thinks abotu why one would not necessarily keep re-filling it with water and spoke eloquently about the persuasion challenge which needs to be overcome in order to get over that last mile hurdle. Working out how to persuade women to rehydrate their children who are suffering from diarrhoea could be turned into a new positive social science, allowing the community to turn the last mile problem into a last-line opportunity. Positive from negative.

The battle for hearts and minds, Indo-Pak style

Another major positive from this conference, politically perhaps the most important, has been the dogged determination of the organisers to ensure there is representation from across the South Asian continent. About eight Pakistanis, working in different fields from banking to writing to micro-finance and the Acumen Fund, overcame bureaucratic hurdles and long hours at the local police station in order to attend TED, and their presence apparently warmly embraced by the crowd. Of course, the battle is often at the wider end of the social pyramid – how do we dispel rumours rife in both countries that attempt to displace the humanity of the Other? That is a theme to which I will return in another article, but one that strikes me strongly as a Punjabi whose state was split in 1947 and whose history and ties inevitably straddle one of the most highly militarised borders in the world – a border, I should add, where the soldiers on both sides can be seen to make cups of tea or have a chat when the full regalia of military venom is not on display for two war-hungry publics.

As a North Indian in South India, where it is very easy to notice the considerable differences between North and South, in physique, language, food and customs, it is a cruel reality that the people straddling a northern border literally come from the same stock.

Honey bees and cross-pollen

Enough politics and back to the wider parameters of the social network. Anil Gupta illuminated the afternoon with a lecture on why “minds on the margin are not marginalised minds”. The Honey Bee network seeks to ensure that society can learn from grassroots innovators, giving examples of 70-year old Saidullah who developed an amphibious bicycle so he can cross the lake to meet his love, a two wheeler washing machine that can be brought to people’s doors to help women with their heavy domestic tasks and illustrated how these local solutions fit downwards, creating a place for small scale solutions in a globalised world.

Lighten up people 

There was some light-heartedness in the day’s intensity too. Electronica with kalaripyat, an ancient martial arts dance in Mukul Deora. An advocate of the “fun theory” who made us laugh with a video of how enterprising social planners, trying to make Stockholm’s population walk rather than take the stairs, created a sound piano on the staircase leading out of Odenplan metro station leading to a significant number of people walking, dancing and attempting to play music instead! Or the entirely mad but incredible invention of Ramachandran Budihal’s team who have digitalised ancient Hampi using “Imagineering” allowing a 3D guided tour to pull you back centuries, conjuring up ancient kings and gods in 3D vision in front of you as you walk through protected sites, and even allowing scribbling hands to grafiiti in 3D rather than ruin heritage monuments. Incredible.

And then to Bollywood

The entertainment world was brought in to the day with Abhay Deol, an upcoming Bollywood star, talking about how he can use film to develop social issues – telling us about the Association of the Dead with its 10,000 members being people who are certified legally dead, but in fact remain alive and nobody will acknowledge them! Or Shekhar Kapur, the illustrious film director, who frankly made little sense when he spoke but who cared because he was just so damn good looking!

The day ended with a party that turned into mad dancing and singing, with the last buses heading back overcrowded to double their capacity with Indians and westerners joining forces to sing and dance on seats and safety rails rather precariously, proving Bollywood truly has the capacity to bond nations.

And on that very aerated note, it is certainly time for bed. Three more hours sleep again. We are heading to delirium, dhoom-dhamaka style.

DAY THREE OF TED INDIA: The Humbling Effect of Wonder

November 5th 2009, Official Day One of TED INdia Mysore

India is Shining and she is not afraid to flaunt her progress in the face of a confident world here in Mysore. The speaker line up on the first official day of the TED India conference was almost exclusively Indian, with a couple of notable exceptions, and at times the curves of the day hit frankly (forgive the overused but entirely appropriate adjective here) mind-blowing proportions.  

One of the world’s top inventors

When you are presented with one of the world’s top inventors, a young Indian man by the name of Pranav Mistry, who has devised a device called the Sixth Sense which literally allows digital technology to be accessed by people anywhere and everywhere, using a gadget and a piece of paper to search Google, to check plane tickets or the latest news, or to cut and paste documents without the need for scanners or computers themselves, when you are faced with such extraordinary talent which also is wrapped up in an unassuming humility, mind-blowing is the only appropriate adjective. mind. Pranav stunned the audience with his easy demonstrations showing  how his invention could bring technology  to the masses truly cheaply by overlaying the physical world with digital information.

Ultra affordability

Ultra affordability and creative genius to bring serious social innovation and change for the world’s poorest people has been a driving theme all day. So it’s Not Business As Usual, then. It’s Fast Forward. The sometimes controversial R A Mashelkar whistled the audience through a “more from less for more” philosophy, which he called Gandhian Engineering, drawing on the Tata Nano car, the world’s first car to be sold for exactly $2000, as a means to give the poor some dignity back, exploring the material concept in practical terms as well as its social transformational possibilities in affording the poor a physical space on the social rung. Gasps escaped the audience when he showed the new technology designed in India to bring prosthetic limbs costing just $20 to the poor, adapted to their needs so adeptly that a man who collects coconuts for a living can climb palm trees, jump off the branches, fitted with the prosthetic leg, and then run a kilometre in just over four minutes. Ultra affordability and social innovation designed to conquer an unequal marketplace. Pawan Sinha, too, showed us how the brain can recognise the patterns around us to give blind children the gift of sight when they have been told it is unlikely that they will ever be able to see again. His research in Delhi has developed fascinating  findings concerning the way in which the autistic brain functions through sight, which may provide valuable breakthroughs into this disability which causes so much frustration and difficulty in children, and their parents’ lives. A breakout session this morning had shown us how autism and developmental difficulties are being frequently misdiagnosed, and that ECGs of the brain, used by an Indian neuroscientist, are beginning to change the way in which these developmental conditions are understood, and treated, with medicine targeting brain seizures actually correcting the symptoms which mimic autism. Presented with science and technology combining to produce these pioneering results both for individuals and society, I spent most of my day feeling exceptionally humbled.

The mythology of a corporate culture?

When a giant Indian corporate group, Futures, employs a Chief Beliefs Officer, Devdutt Pattaniak, who stuns a fiercely rational international audience with insightful explorations of Western mythology versus Eastern mythology, drawing on the mythical meeting between Alexander the Great and a Gymnosophist, one who believed in one life and the other who believed in an infinity of lives, when a man of that understanding working at the height of corporate culture in booming India can use mythology to assist two potentially clashing cultures to work together rather than to be exasperated by each other, that too blew me away.

And then, frankly, it’s all about cricket

As if this unparalleled campus was not enough to show the glittering face of Indian progress,  the globe auditorium mirroring Floridas’s Epcot Centre with a stage given over to vintage saris and Indian antique glamour, there was a lighter note to counter the day’s intensity. India’s fortunes in cricket were revealed in cheerleading glory by the celebrity commentator, Harsha Bhogle, as he regaled the audience with stories of  “accidents” that led Indian cricket to win a World Cup, ‘steal’ English ideas of a novel 20/20 game and recently to introduce an American style IPL league in India, declaring the gentleman’s game its unique, Bollywood-toting own. Hard to imagine Frank Lampard or Cristiano Ronaldo dancing on television adverts to popularise football, but Sachin Tendulkar and Harbhajan Singh evidently are far more talented in the shoulder-shaking sport. Shah Rukh Khan hugging a Pakistani cricketer who played for his Calcutta team shows the unifying power of sport, met with a large round of applause by an appreciative crowd.

Music as a unifying force

Music, dance and rhythm also provided an uplifting interlude to the loftiness throughout the day. A haunting musical introduction by the popular  Usha Ulthap was followed before lunch with a multi-lingual rendition. Usha, a renowned singer in India, had the audience singing in Punjabi as she sang in Russian, Swahili, Arabic and Hebrew. It was perhaps a shame that she sang less in Hindi than might have been expected -this crowd certainly would have appreciated it – but she was complemented  by the well known Mallika Sarabhai who uses the arts as an aggressive form of getting across political campaigns of social responsibility. Her style may jar with some, but who knew that a clean cotton sari, folded eight times, through which water then is sieved, dramatically reduces water-borne disease? Communication through dance and music may yet save many thousands of villagers’ lives across Asia. The final duo of the day, Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan, left goose bumps across me, tingling with an extraordinary fusion of classical western piano with classical Tamil vocals.

Food for the soul

Perhaps, though, the most unexpected speaker and effect came from the day’s sole spiritual nourishment, Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev who runs the Isha Foundation in South India. Dressed in the white robes and yellow scarves of a holy man, his light hearted humour and fluent  no-nonsense discussion of how he came to accept his own deep spiritual experiences, which he described as turning him into a giant question mark for years, seemed to infect a conference who one participant yesterday described as akin to a religion for atheists. Watching  this wise and jovial man spinning on the stage like a sufi as Usha Uthup sang in Russian across the stage was an experience that made me contemplate attending one of his retreats, India in one form leading to India in another. It leads me to a series of thoughts about what India is able to give the world if it stays true to all of its multifacted identities, rather than simply accpet what the Western world today confirms as the only possible corporate and social logic. Bu that thought is for another day. for now, i wondered only – What gives this spiritual leader  that easy-hearted  joy? How do we define happiness, the subject of yet another talk today in the context of corporate culture and employee happiness.

No value in homogenous viewpoints or serpents

Of course, I didn’t agree with absolutely everything I heard today – what would be the value in homogeneity? Inevitably innovation and ideas bring controversy and diverse views. One man’s ideas of grand infrastructure in Dubai, for example, may be my idea of environmental disaster, even if it does represent a spectacular feat of engineering. And whilst I understand the whole “When in Rome” business, I dearly wish the subject of venomous snakes would just go away. Yesterday and today, as an environmentalist spoke about his conservation work for the Indian King Cobra in the Western Ghats, which felt uncomfortably close to Mysore at this juncture, I wished I could find compassion and wish him  – and his beasts - well, but as I shrunk back visibly into my seat, narrowly avoiding the humiliation of leaping out of the auditorium on film, all I wished is that he would take the spitting forked tongue out of the projector image that had the twelve foot creature hanging literally right over us.

But the spirit of the day was to absorb a collection  of ideas that stunned, surprised and informed you, and one man’s truth is not every man’s taste. With the exception of the spitting cobra eating the pit viper, every single speaker presented food for thought.

Intensity and humility

Ten hours of lectures and another five hours or talking to healthcare workers, venture capitalists, photojournalists, fashion designers, teachers, artists, architects and social innovators from forty six countries, all so excited by the power and inspiration of change, was enough to exhilarate and exhaust most of us, yet somehow the spirit to absorb, engage and learn has kept many of us on our feet until way past one in the morning, again. Humility, too, has kept my senses keen.

The spectacular Swedish professor of public health, Hans Rosling, who opened the day with an energy-packed eighteen minutes told us that it was “possible, probable, though far from certain,” that India and China would catch up with the West in economic and health terms by the 27^th July 2048.

We have about forty years to save the planet but in the meantime, we all need to sleep. Three hours until I need to be awake again, in every sense.

The day starts again with fierce intensity tomorrow. In one day, I feel I have learned more that I ordinarily would have learned in a year, about India today, about the innovation and power in her vibrant civil society, about the world and about ourselves. I probably can recall just a fraction of what has been said, but unlike a day at law school or other conferences, i didn’t fall asleep for even a single minute, jet lagged, sleep-deprived or otherwise.

Last words then to one of the organisers, Lakshmi, who in true Indian style (Goodness Gracious me or My Big Fat Greek Wedding – you choose) told us why TED, famous for its eighteen minute lectures, was really an Indian invention. Eighteen chapters in the Mahabharata, eighteen sections in the Bhagavat Gita, eighteen days in an ancient historical battle, and eighteen minutes to transfer wisdom. TED India.

India shone brightly today, first with sunshine, and now with stars.

Namaste. Sat Sri Akal. Salaam Ailakum. Good night.

Day Two TED India: A Colourful Prologue of Ideas

A little analogy on assumptions

 “A Japanese man asks a New Yorker in Manhattan what is the name of the block they are standing on. The New Yorker looks puzzled and says this is Park Avenue and that is 69^th street. The block has no name. Streets have names, not blocks.

“Two years later, the New Yorker is in Tokyo. He asks a Japanese man what the name of the street is. The Japanese man replies that the block on the left is 18^th block and that on the right is 16^th block. Blocks have names, streets have no names”.

I “borrowed” this quote from one of the afternoon speakers who used it to illustrate that whatever assumptions we may all bring into our daily lives, the exact opposite may equally be true.

Assumptions, questions, Cuba

An apt example fell into my own lap today, not once, but three times. Those familiar with these pages know that, whilst I am very far from being a “Castro sympathiser”, I consider that there are degrees of complexity behind today’s Cuba that are not easily painted into the black and white that politicians, particularly, prefer. People matter more than ideologies, though often the impact of ideologies on people leaves both open to valid criticism. Questions I have asked many times before present as real as ever as I re-visit India, and in particular as I confront the diversity that is India today, seen starkly in the astonishing technology and modernity of this university campus contrasted against the slums that lined the furthest edges of Bangalore away from the eyes of international visitors. Both are real, both form polar lines of this vast constitutional democracy. But, I ask again, when villagers have no access to clean water, hygiene or food, and when the right to vote is so easily bought with a grain of rice, where does the human right to participate freely in our electoral choices sit against that basic human right to subsist, with water, food and healthcare? I have never offered up Cuba, with its basic failures to promote democracy or freedom of expression as, a plausible alternative. I have, however, argued strongly, that clear lines and questions of “Freedom, American-style” are not to be answered lightly or easily in a population that is so well educated that a road sweeper could quote Shakespeare, and beyond the years of the so-called “special period”, where the majority of the population has access to the most basic commodities of water, food and a roof, however unsatisfactory.

Enough on Cuba, this is TED India

But this is no article about Cuba. This is a blog on TED India and I step back from unfinished comments and questions with an interjection about why this conference is special. The least likely place, you may say, to meet three individuals at different times of the day with healthy Cuban connections. The first encounter, over breakfast becomes lunch, was with, let’s call him J.  His connections link him back to the wealthiest family’s in Batista’s Cuba, pre 1959. His venom against Castro and today’s Cuba is powerful, perhaps it informs much of what he says and does. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that we came dangerously close to clashing.

A littany of truths

But to revert to the Japanese street-block example, one truth does not make another truth wrong. There can be so many truths. It is true that wealthy families in Cuba lost everything. It is true that they remain in rage against the man who removed it from them.  It is true that, personally, those losses are impossible to bear and those of us who stand aside have not had to bear them.

It may also be true that they were part of the system that led to the gross disparities in wealth that led to popular support for the Revolution, even if today with hindsight, many of the objectives that Castro and his guerrillas fought for in the Sierra Maestra are as far from reality as most Cubans live from prosperity.

It may also be true, as another Cuban émigré from the States told me today, that part of the American irrationality against Cuba lies in the memory of the Bay of Pigs missile crisis, a genuine fear that this tiny island may permit nuclear war onto the shores of Miami.

And as a Brazilian émigré to Miami told me also, Cubans in Miami have brought all those fears and wrapped them up into Republican politics of the day. And so there are many truths that we have to respect, fold, unpick and choose from. As a mini-advert in the day told us, you sometimes miss what you aren’t looking for.

What are you looking for amongst the trees?

And in the astonishing forum that is TED, we were all able to look for something we weren’t looking for. Or be faced with it in any event, For this is a place where you can converse, discuss, disagree and then kiss each other good night, a place which almost has cult status amongst its devotees, who return time and again for the sheer fortune of being able to meet such fascinating people all in one chemical reaction.  In Uganda, it is said that if you throw a seed, a forest grows. In TED, there seems to be a forest of seeds everywhere, sprouting with ideas and new growth. The IQ quotidient here must be extraordinary. But its real genius lies in gathering together people who in many ways have nothing material to gain from each other but knowledge, inspiration and a lot of laughter. People, of course, are on the lookout for someone with whom they can work or foster a new relationship, but the diversity of people and their backgrounds necessitates that the audience, participants and speakers alike, are here to learn, think and sow new seeds.

A global forest

In one day, I have met and had in depth conversations with Cubans of opposing political views, an Armenian American who is going to work for a micro-financing project in his country of origin, a Greek-English woman who lives in Athens and has set up a foundation with a local orphanage where she volunteers every year, South Africans about to set up a kibbutz-style green initiative in Johannesburg, Indians who work for Google all over the planet it seems, corporate New Yorkers, and the most wonderful Indian couple from Hyderabad whose romance, it seems, fell out of a Rohinton Mistry novel where she, a glamorous professional dancer with cropped hair and a majestic orange sari, worked for the Indian Railways when she met her husband, who now works in software, but who then went to sell her a Xerox machine. He sold her his machine and his heart altogether. Now their experiences take them all over the world. She has travelled the length and bredth of Latin America to perform Bharat Natyam to audiences who knew nothing of India. Then there are my IMAK friends, and the TED fellows who are making such a difference to communities across India and of Indian origin all over the world, whether they are developing health initiatives or baking pastries or catching snakes in Delhi – oh yes, and the last guy told me for sure that my snake phobia is genetic, not curable – got it, all of you who say I need to get into a snake pit? And what of the writers, activists and film makers from Pakistan who have endured hours of daily police reporting just to get here and share their stories with their neighbours, stories of art and suicide bombs, politics and love? These are just a handful of the people I met today, the list honestly grows every hour with people with whom meaningful conversations are exchanged, not just a brief hello.

The pre-conference speakers

Of the speakers at the pre-conference events, a few stand out. The teacher in Bangkok who is revolutionalising the class-room through innovative use of technologies that allow people to zoom in and out of timelines and information scenarios, to be shared with people across the world. A lesson in the ten most important Indian artists creating waves in the 21^st century. A scientist who claims that his discipline and the humanities meet through his research of mirror neurones, or Gandhi neurones as he termed them somewhat tongue in cheek, which make each of us connected to everyone else, leaving us without any distinctive consciousness. The guy who produces industrial warehouse shelving in California that is becoming a model for slums, with structures that take just a few days to put up and can be dismantled without any environmental impact at all. Is this something that could be used for refugee camps, I wonder? Might the Sri Lankan government think about this too, I find myself thinking..The lack of efficiency in India’s tradition of dynastic succession, the practical approach of telemedicine which is bringing healthcare to India’s rural masses…

A throat lozenge and bed

This has been just a little taste of what the conference, which starts proper tomorrow, is to bring. It is intense, surreal and yet somehow a blast into an actual reality from which we are divorced in daily working life patterns – the ability to communicate, to talk to just anyone, just to talk, just to learn. A time for Ideas.

 Good Night.

TED India: A Blog About Ideas

TED India, Mysore

November 3rd 2009

I had absolutely no idea what to expect as I traipsed half way around the globe for an international conference about the power of Ideas in a country that is right in the middle of reinvention. I had signed up, got the invite, bought the flight and somehow managed to think of three concepts on my name badge (with a little help from a friend, thank you S) before I arrived. Beyond that, nothing. I had failed entirely to engage with the online talks and the emails telling me what to expect. Caught up in the rigours of an equal pay trial, Big Ideas were not really featuring heavily in my somewhat over-taxed brain. Nor did I really think about printing off basic necessities, like the address of where I was going, or a number to call if things went wrong.

And, since this is me, and no story is complete without at least some element of drama, yes, I did become the only TED India attendee to catch a public bus from Bangalore in the throes of jet lag and weeks of sleeplessness without an address or number, and get unceremoniously dumped in the middle of a pitch black highway by a few rice paddies with a rucksack (it’s true) and a bright green handbag a few kilometres outside Mysore centre with no address, and no number. Did I already say that? So, as I sat contemplating the cows which I could hear but not see, since there were no street lights, and the fact that the pollution and noise of Bangalore had wiped out the last of my lungs, I pulled out a bottle of Bisleri and tugged on a  prayer to find an auto-rickshaw. And one came. Out of the dark. Wanting only one thing.

To know which Infosys campus I was heading towards. You mean there was more than one???

So, let’s say I had an eventful journey through the rice paddies of Karnataka on my way to a conference about Ideas. Nothing ironic about surrealism.

And I did truly wonder whether I had lost the plot, coming to India on a whimsical flirtation with a Big Idea.

Without an address or a number. My brother calls me a space cadet for good reason, it seems.

But, as I arrived, whisked onto a grandiose campus that resembled the White House and its acres of lawns, and was taken to a pristine room,  filled with internet connections, water to brush my teeth, information about a swimming pool and squash courts and bowling alley and library and bookshop and theatres and art installations on this beautiful academic space, the flow began to come back to me.

And within all of about ten minutes I had found that MoJo again. Wow! The promise is inspiration and I am spellbound. 

I have been here for about four hours and it has been unbelievably unique already. Dinner was being served for everyone in a big hall. About 500 people from mostly the US, a few from England and Europe and a fair number from India milled around drinking lime soda and eating delicious food, whilst chatting to everyone. Now, as a lawyer and journalist, both professions given over to excessive chat, conferences are not shy events. But they are usually tainted with the opportunism of networking and grandiosity in a way that was entirely missing from the feast of people and converations that lingered on every table and open space.

Tonight I met a wonderful French woman; she works in advertising, moved to Montreal, and over green tea cake,  told me about her latest weird dream and her worries for France under a President who has to wear heels. I met a gregarious New Yorker whose passion for media and the wired world has helped make this stealthy community of people obsessed with Ideas what it is. An English film director, a Californian guy who set up his own micro-brewery, Hans Rosling who will kick off the conference tomorrow, a warm Indian woman from Mumbai who works in arts at the British Council, media-savvy Indian women from Delhi who work with the press, a Swiss program director who thinks all things Ideas and a plethora of Americans who have been to TED many times over.

It has barely begun but I feel that there is something extraordinary about this event. People who travel from thousands of miles to experience something new, to understand and experiment with something new. It has been enough to make me leave my phone in my room, and only connect with my laptop at night. For those who know my obsession with being “wired”, that is a significant gauntlet.

I can hardly wait for tomorrow. I shall catch up this blog then. For now , what was your last weird dream?

Oh, and my Name Badge:
Talk to me about:
Woman in Havana, Human Rights, The Fourth Estate

Namskar.

Final weird fact of the day: The Ulema in India has issued a fatwa against any Indian Muslim who sings Vande Mataram. Make of that what you will, for those in favour of fatwas, and those who make national anthems nationalistic or jingoistic. Still, as anthems go, I quite like old Vande Mataram.

THE DIRTY FINGERS OF INDIA SHINING

India is right to trumpet her many achievements over the last decade. They are well documented, and the world, it seems, is flocking to crown those glories. The crown, though, is littered with the thorns of a dangerous past which its own Congress government has planted, polished and then tried to bury amongst the subsequent bloom of roses. For the secular credentials of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress government are not all that they appear to be.

November 1st 1984

Twenty five years ago, on the morning of November 1^st 1984, I woke up in London to get ready for school. My parents, of Indian Sikh origin, sat staring at the television screen. Nobody told us to brush our teeth, or to stop messing around with our Ready Brek. Worried phone calls and shock replaced our daily British routine. The massacre of four thousand innocent Sikhs in Delhi, and beyond, had begun. Much of the world’s media has allowed the Indian government to portray what happened as an ‘explosion of grief’ in response to Indira Gandhi’s assassination by her two Sikh bodyguards following her orders on Operation Bluestar. The truth, however, is far more chilling.

The ten days that followed Gandhi’s assassination are documented extensively in eye witness testimony provided to NGOs and Government Commissions themselves.  Unsubstantiated rumours began to spread on the night of October 31^st 1884 that Sikhs were celebrating Gandhi’s murder. By late that night and early the following morning, gangs of young men were dousing petrol and flames into parts of South Delhi that today are amongst the swankiest and most elite residential neighbourhoods of the city. In Delhi, in Kanpur and in Calcutta, the police and political forces stood by whilst the fury of part of the population was unleashed in burnings, killings and horror. Women were gang raped, a violent shame tactic later employed in Gujarat, gurdwaras, home and Sikh business were destroyed. Eye witnesses describe Congress leaders identifying those Sikh homes and businesses by list. There is evidence that Delhi’s public buses were used to transport the gangs from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. The army was not called onto the streets on the morning of November 1^st 1984.  Curfew was neither imposed nor enforced until most of the damage was done. No credible explanation has ever been provided for this.

Deep questions remain

Two and a half decades later, the language of the discourse remains as blurry as ever. Was it a genocide? Who drew up lists of identification? Why did the police disappear or intervene to protect the mobs rather than the victims? Did Rajiv Gandhi, the incumbent Prime Minister, encourage the murders through his statements on the radio? Did members of Congress incite the killings? Why did Ministers fail to act when they had been warned by the army that a “holocaust” may be unleashed that very night?  Who kept the army at bay? In short, was this State-sponsored violence of the order that led to another decade of brutality in which some 10,000 Punjabi Sikhs, mostly men, were “disappeared” by the State?

The findings of the Nanavati Commission

The Nanavati Commission was set up in 2000 with broad terms of reference. Four years later it reported back, with findings that the State had been involved. Politicians were implicated heavily, but no action taken against them. International organisations have heavily criticised the State actions and impunity with which the police have proceeded in Punjab and Delhi over this period, and the subsequent period of so-called counter-insurgency operations in Punjab. In 2007, India’s CBI finally announced that it was closing the case on 1984 for lack of evidence in spite of massive eye witness testimony both to the violence, as well as to the involvement of police and politicians. In the 1994 report Dead Silence: Legacy of Abuses in Punjab, Human Rights Watch/Asia and Physicians for Human Rights described the government operations in Punjab through the 1980s as “the most extreme example of a policy in which the end appeared to justify any and all means, including torture and murder.” Still, the Congress government of India stays quiet. Indeed, Manmohan Singh even described this torture, killings and disappearances as “aberrations”in the fight against terrorism.

Insaaf: the search for justice

Insaaf means justice in many Indian languages. No justice has been done for India’s Sikhs who represent just 2% of the population but whose culture, language and music now forms the popular background to Bollywood hit after hit.

The Indian government, even with a Sikh at its head, has studiously refused to contemplate the truth of what has happened in India. For many of India’s political and social elite, it is more convenient to forget than to confront. Why dredge up memories that are painful, and which threaten a peaceful co-existence between ethnic and religious communities, they say. The danger in that path is that when it has happened  before, it can happen again. It did happen again. It happened in Mumbai in 1993,  and very notably in Godhra in Gujrat in 2002; still  Narendra Modi who is said to be the chief architect of that genocide against the Gujrati Muslim population, retains power. Kashmir has known decades of state abuse of power with thousands of disappeared and dead. The only certainty in India’s future is that it has happened before, and so without any remedy or accountability, or justice for any of these minority groups, it will happen again. Who knows to whom?

The role of international law

International law and principles demand that States conduct effective investigations and hold perpetrators accountable. In country after country where a population has brutalised its minority, and in the case of South Africa its majority, there has needed to be an open reconciliation with the truth. It can take the form of truth commissions, like in South Africa or in Salvador or Guatemala, or it can take the form of court actions like in Rwanda, Argentina and Chile where the most powerful members of society, including army generals or even Pinochet himself, have been successfully prosecuted for their pivotal role in the disappearances of so many thousands of men.

It is not enough that the Delhi courts very recently have convicted local small fry for their complicity in murder and criticised the Indian Police for their role in the 1984 killings. The Indian government needs both to bring accountability and to be accountable in order to ensure that the architects and orchestrators are not left to enjoy their lives, or even remain in local and national government, with complete impunity.

Last week, Human Rights Watch urged the world’s largest democracy to take a global role in leading the human rights discourse so that it can influence its counterparts in Burma, Sri Lanka and Nepal. But until the truth of the extent of State-sponsored murder on ethnic lines, both in terms of the 1984 pogroms and the subsequent disappearances that ripped through Punjab’s male population, is revealed, the dirty fingers that parade the India Shining adverts across the world are blackening  the country’s very future.

31st October 2009

http://www.hrw.org/en/node/10644/section/4

http://www.sikhcoalition.org/HumanRights1.asp

http://ensaaf.org/publications/reports/descriptiveanalysis/

http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2002/india/

IN PURSUIT OF SMYRNA (A HAPLESS TRAVELLER’S TALE)

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

It was meant to be a well-prepared quest to visit modern-day Izmir in Turkey. I was supposed to have been mentally immersed in history books and literature, poised to delve into the old city known to Greeks as Smyrna, which was as much a place as an idea. Smyrna, synonymous with the dwindling days of the Ottoman empire. La belle époque. The old place. Smyrna. The beginnings of a twentieth century fascination with partitions of people, defiling and dividing humanity in the hunt for pure religious states.  Until now, I had only had the possibility of constructing Smyrna through the rembetika music, known colloquially as the Greek blues.

No quest could have had less pure beginnings.

Our holiday plans swept away by the floods in Istanbul, my friend and I descended south to a small village called Yaklivak, some 20km outside the glitzy resort town of Bodrum. Obviously, the sensible and well-planned types amongst you would have warned us that glittering towns filled with Turkish nightlife might find themselves waning during the holy month of Ramadan. The forearmed amongst you may have predicted the holidaying hordes of Englishmen and women who landed (off-season of course) upon our gorgeous hotel, nestled in the hills amongst silvery olive groves, watering themselves all day with cheap Turkish beer and reserving their sunbeds at first light of dawn. Suddenly, this sweet boutique hotel – a term much overused in Turkey and which for now I leave nameless – had transformed from Turkish Delight into Cheap Chip Heaven. No, a week of R&R was clearly beyond us. We needed a car, and we needed out.

 And quite simply, that is how the pursuit of Smyrna began. A place that has captured my imagination through history and the haunting sounds of the oud was about to become a modern day reality as the steeply winding roads that hugged the coastal cliffs and spectacular countryside led us out of the Bodrum peninsula towards Izmir.

Rembetika and “population exchange” 

My way into Smyrna’s past began as a love for rembetika music, which the immigrants into Piraeus and Thassaloniki in Greece brought with them on the ships after they were deported in what became known cynically as the “population exchanges” of 1922 between Greece and Turkey. Practically speaking, it is true that what took place was an unprecedented “population exchange” legitimised internationally by the Lausanne treaty, allowing the Turkish government to “return” between 1.5 and 2 million “Greek Christians” to the newly emerging modern state of Greece and the Greek state to “return” perhaps half a million “Turkish Muslims” to Turkey. Returning people to places which they have never visited, still yet lived in, is an astonishing term in the political landscape created at that time. In the 1990s, that same desire was labelled ethnic cleansing, or genocide. There is much blame, much bitterness and much nationalistic jingo on both sides and this is not the place to recite that. Nothing I say in this piece is to exonerate either side, or to blame one side more than the other. But this visit was to Smyrna, not to Thrace in Greece, where perhaps similar thoughts in reverse would enter my mind, as the Greek flag is raised in an unquestioning assertion that to be Greek is to to belong to the Christian Orthodoxy. Suffice to say that the quest for ‘pure’ states – as it has done in Bosnia, India, Rwanda, Israel and others – leads to a catastrophe of human suffering. In the port cities of Piraeus and Thessaloniki, the sadness and misery of that enforced migration was brought alive through rembetika music, drawing on the tunes, instruments and sentiments of the Asia Minor, and particularly the burning city of Smyrna, left behind.

Followed by the finger of an oud 

We bypassed the city’s beckoning finger at first, choosing the more hedonistic splendours of an afternoon at glamorous beach resorts in Alaçati and Çesme. But even there, I was not to escape my fate. Nor indeed could my luckless friend, whose idea of a beach holiday had been converted into an 850km trek though she cannot abide the nostalgic strains of rembetika. Arriving late at night in the Turkish equivalent of Capri, with not a single English voice to be heard, the winding melody wrapped itself into the autumn air. It was Independence Day in Alaçati, and although we were too late to witness the spectacle of the grand Efes dancers, twirling their noble moustaches in the Aegean equivalent of the zebekiko dance, made famous by Zorba the Greek, the strains of the oud would float over us over dinner. A local Turkish restauranteur, whose origins lie in Salonica, is one of many urbane Turks who take an deceptive pride in their Greek roots. Amongst old Levantine families and an upper strata of Turkish society on the Westernmost coasts, it’s suddenly chic to be Greek. So it was that we stayed in another gorgeous place, the Tashmahal hotel, whose six rooms and pomegranate-laden courtyard had nothing to do with India and everything to do with the house’s origins as a Greek winemaker’s hostel before, before.

 Through sunglass-tinted eyes, it is clear that my pursuit of Smyrna was hardly the planned pilgrimage I had envisioned over the decade in which its underworld music has placed an inexplicable longing deep inside of my stomach, an aching which almost breaks my heart as the chords transport me to a world where once-elegant men and women remembered the society left behind forever on the shores of Asia Minor. The pursuit of Smyrna just happened.

Almost by mistake.

 But it did happen. And I did finally reach Izmir, if only in a glimpse and promise of return.

Smyrna, Izmir, unfolding out of a bay 

The city unfolds out of a bay, shrouded perpetually in a wistful mist that descends over the climbing colourful houses, an array of pastel blues, greens and pinks that line the arc from the sea up steep slopes.  It is impossible to fail to notice that the Turkish flag is draped across every door, building and natural peak in the district, demanding absolute unity and loyalty.

 The morning mist lingers over the Izmiri commuters, who grab tiny glasses of tea and bagel-like breads called simit, stuffed with salty goat’s cheese and tomatoes as they race for the ferries to work across the bay. Tugs lie moored along the choppy water’s edges, their funnels rising like the masts of the narghile water pipes, for now hidden behind kilim-decked wooden benches until nightfall. Giant cargo ships lie docked in the deeper waters, oddly resembling the port of Piraeus. The seafront is lined for kilometres with cafes proudly displaying battered backgammon boards, university students pretending that they are not holding hands, and the sturdy rows of fishermen casting invisible nylon nets out to catch the morning bream. A pleasing nonchalance spills onto the pavements, releasing the carefree spirit of the seaside and adventure of a port. Delicious food is found on every corner: Gözleme, a stuffed village bread, little kebab sticks of çöp sis and grilled chicken as well as fragrant lentil soups and pide, a Turkish pizza dressed in minced meat or cheese and peppers.  As I sit and contemplate the unfolding cityscape, my morning sweetened by strong, sugary black tea, I am approached by a grandmother, Yaya, in her billowing trousers big enough to hide a harem, her head tidily covered in a village scarf and her features lined by the sun and worries of a century which moved forwards, backwards, and then paused. She asks me if she can read my tea-grinds, thrusting camomile flowers and wild sage leaves into my hair. I wonder what she has seen and what she will see again, for me, for her, for us all but since I don’t speak Turkish and she doesn’t speak English, we both shrug amiably and she goes in search of her next customer.

Kadifekele

Kadifekele rises sharply on the city’s slopes, bearing the distinctive skyline of the city. From afar, its colourful buildings creep up the hill like an architectural jigsaw puzzle. Up close, daylight betrays its shanty-like existence playing host to the large communities of Kurds and Eastern Turks who arrive here in search of prosperity. Leaving the strains of Turkish pop by the shoreline, I choose the lazy option and climb the hill by the historical elevator. It was built in 1907 by the city’s once-strong Jewish community whose synagogues remain in the city today. Almost immediately, the tolerant, affluent city begins to disappear.  In its place scrambles a vibrant street life borne of poverty and strict traditional values. A mishmash of pink, yellow and blue swirls between houses, headscarves and mosques. Orthodox stone churches, in their octagonal designs, are veiled by attached minarets constructed of newer stone, hoping to hide an inglorious past by the repetition of God’s name. This distinctive and fascinating quarter of Izmir is built out of the ashes of a city razed to the ground in 1922, part of the quest for purity for a modern state that would call itself secular but which had killed off its Armenian Christan population and was threatening to do the same to the Orthodox Greek population.  Still today, the purity is not sufficient – for humankind is always too aware of its dirt, sin and tiny differences – as women on these slopes adopt the manteaux of their Iranian neighbours, and wear colourful floral headscarves in a modish nod to their country women.

This is the same district which a local trader ripping off leather-imitations of Prada bags warned us not to approach. He told us that the Kurds will steal from us, harm us, hold us, just as the trader himself would have been told that the Christians, the Armenians, the Greeks and others would harm him. A fifth of the population killed, destroyed, removed for being the other. The other who shared language, custom, food and culture eradicated from school books and official teachings.

History is here but not here as we head to the Kemaralti bazaar below, a market laden with the calls and clothes of another age. Famous Bursa black figs are literally bursting with flood waters, but peaches and pomegranates lie in  perfect mounds amongst piles of black, green and red grapes as well as purple, yellow and turquoise headscarves. Turkey’s third largest city is a contrast of tone and texture, but one that has tried to erase most of the memories of her past.

 Bittersweet, like Greek and Turkish coffee

There is an inexplicable sweetness in this shroud, however, for the souls of centuries leave their fond imprints on the shores of the bay. Energy pours out of the sea into the teashops which fill the bazaar and the seafront, fuelling the city’s folk with tiny cups of tea and potent coffee. Trays of baklawa lie adorned with green pistachios, baskets of freshly picked and peeled walnuts heap the pavements as they may have done for centuries. The outer edges of this unplanned, sprawling city ooze like honey towards the Aegean, a city so far west the fishermen can almost throw their nets to Greece.

 If I close my eyes,  I can hear a trembling wail rumbling in the wind. Maybe the voices of those who were forced to leave in a matter of days left their tears here, plastered on the breeze. Maybe those who were forcibly brought here looked westwards and cried. There are no graves, and no monuments to the dead, killed and buried. That is why the music lives on, in the weeping of the oud which defines this place which exists and yet does not exist.

Smyrna. History does indeed cling to her hills, rising and falling with the morning and evening mists. As daylight climbs out of the bay, however, Smyrna is no more. Izmir has marched straight in.

I have snatched but the briefest of glimpses into this city where history began in 1922.  Life is still drunk in tiny coffee cups and served with bite-size chunks of apricot loukoum. The way it always was, but not quite.

In and out, just like that 

My quest, barely begun, was already ending as the banalities of a flight to catch meant we had to leave before the dots could be joined, and so we headed for the easy hills of Sirinçe, to clean mountain air and goat shepherds, and the drummer who banged through the streets at 3am, in pursuit of centuries of tradition, to ensure the faithful rise to prayer, and the faithless are condemned to sleeplessness.

Where civilisation demands civilisation

 There are no easy answers to these vexed and heated questions of nationalism which started the twentieth century on these shores, once known as Asia Minor. Memories lie dead or faded, myth become fact, barbarians become the civilised, civilisation rewrites history.

 No, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Progress demands clarity.

 To be continued.

September 20th 2009

Afghanistan: No Honour in Shame

In the war against terror, women count for nothing. Hamid Karzai, in a spectacular volte-face on his supposedly moderate public position towards women in Afghanistan, has supported and ratified a barbaric law which catapults Shia Afghani women back to the Taliban era.

Human Rights Watch and the new law

Human Rights Watch reported today that they had seen a copy of the new law, in force from the end of July. No official announcements have been made about the law which conveniently has been passed days before Karzai is expected to win a second term in office. Contrary to Karzai’s promises to the UN and Western leaders in early April, when he vowed to review the proposed law and remove all discriminatory articles, the Western-backed Afghan President has allowed Taliban rule to return in all but name. HRW reports that the law gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands. It grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers. It requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying “blood money” to a girl who was injured when he raped her.

 The UN position

The latest UNHCR Guidelines on Afghanistan reveal the unsurprising news that women continue to bear the brunt of the civil society’s “moral” code. Prosecuted for adultery when they have been raped, detained in sub-standard prisons allegedly for their own protection from honour killings and reportedly with up to 80% of women suffering domestic violence, Afghani women’s rights are being “curtailed, restricted and systematically violated”.

 The reality for Afghan women

There are few women in public office in Afghanistan but those that dare to step out and speak up are easy prey. Sitara Achakzai, an Afghan women’s rights defender and member of the Kandahar provincial council, was killed outside her home. Gul Pecha and Abdul Aziz were both killed after being accused of immoral acts and condemned to death by a council of conservative clerics. Malai Kakar, the first woman police officer in Kandahar, who ran the police department responsible for investigating crimes against women in that city, was also killed. A 23 year-old Afghan journalist Perwiz Kambakhsh was sentenced to death for circulating an article about women’s rights under Islam, a sentence which later was commuted to 20 years’ imprisonment after strong international protest.

 No honour in shame

Women are easy prey in the battle for men’s honour. But there is no honour in removing the basic human rights and dignity of half of a population. There is no civilisation when its women are trampled upon so that its men can beat their chests. Self-immolation is reportedly on the rise amongst Afghani women. Faced with a choice between life and death, many are choosing death over a life lived in fear, paralysis and shame. This remains a land where women are sold to pay a family’s debts, or where her rape and assault can be paid off by blood-money. This remains a land where women are systematically denied the right to education as girls’ schools continue to remain the subject of targeted attacks, both teachers and children. A huge international uproar rightly accompanied the Taliban’s wanton destruction of historical Buddha statues. Now, the international community, with its troops still in Afghanistan, must speak up for the living and accept no platitudes in the name of cultural norms. There is no honour in shame.

14th August 2009

CASTRO vs CASTRO: The battle for power?

Fidel Castro may no longer be the President of Cuba, but contrary to his indications at the start of 2009, he has no intention of slipping away quietly. The question for Cubans and commentators alike is whether his presence as revered elder statesman in his brother Raul Castro’s government remains either relevant, influential or even lasting.

In early January 2009, Fidel wrote that Cuba should not feel bound by his “occasional Reflections, state of health or [his] death”. He noted that he had “the rare privilege of observing events over such a long time. I receive information and meditate calmly on those events,” he wrote. “I expect I won’t enjoy that privilege in four years, when Obama’s first presidential term has ended…I have reduced the Reflections as I had planned this year, so I won’t interfere or get in the way of the [Communist] Party or government comrades in the constant decisions they must make”.

An 83rd Birthday

Beware those who take Fidel strictly at his word. Coinciding with his 83^rd birthday this week, a new collection of Fidel’s thoughts and writings over the last fifty years has been published in Cuba. His Reflections in the State-run Granma newspaper, far from being reduced, have become increasingly agitated over recent months. Fidel’s latest essay entitled “The Yanki bases and Latin American Sovereignty” is a belligerent rant against American imperialist adventures across the continent. Relying on the well-worn themes of Latin American liberators who have peppered his psychology and speeches for over fifty years, the latest references to Bolivar and Martí are not only surprisingly incoherent at times – with one thread of thought juxtaposing itself against something rather different –  but in light of the new economic crisis facing his country, and a young generation who no longer consider themselves on a constant war footing, the articles appear strangely out of tune with Cuban reality.

Will Raul talk to the old enemy? 

At a meeting of socialist leaders in Venezuela in April 2009, Fidel’s younger brother Raul, who formally took over the Cuban presidency in February 2008, declared a willingness to talk to the United States. “Human rights, press freedom, political prisoners, everything, everything, everything they want to talk about,”, he had said. Obama’s response was to indicate that relations between the two old enemies might begin to improve. Fidel responded angrily from his Granma platform, announcing that Obama had misinterpreted his brother’s comments and that Cuba would not concede even minor issues. Notwithstanding his brother’s constant and critical musings concerning Cuba’s northern neighbour, last week Raul again reiterated that Cuba was prepared to discuss “everything” with the United States, so long as the United States was prepared to discuss “everything” with Cuba. Despite a lifetime of living in the shadow of his brother’s “tall tree”, as Castro Senior once described their relationship, it seems as though Castro Junior is beginning to make his own policy decisions.

 

This extends to more than just rhetoric. In the course of comments made last week to the Cuban National Assembly, a body which supporters unrealistically argue lends democracy to the country’s electoral system,  Raul Castro announced that there would be spending cuts in the “unsustainable” but prized education and health systems of Cuba. He did not provide any detail of these measures which are bound to prove massively unsuccessful in a country which has had to bear decades of isolation, hardship and basic shortages. The free health and education systems are the placards upon which the success of the Revolution generally is held. Many young urban Cubans, often critical of both Castro brothers and their stranglehold on the political system, remain fiercely proud of their state health and education systems, citing statistics about the number of Cuban doctors being exported to Venezuela and other Latin American countries. It will become increasingly difficult for the Cuban government to justify their dictatorship if key planks of their policies crumble. Over the last year, Cubans have often considered themselves protected from the global financial crisis because of their non-capitalist system. Now, the impact of the crisis is being felt on their own beleaguered economy:   Major foodstores are temporarily closing in the urban centres, oil and electricity shortages lead factories to close early and severe restrictions are being placed on air conditioners as the summer heat rips through the island. Rationing remains in place. Memories of the so-called ‘special period’ during the 1990s, when the country underwent severe hardships following the collapse of the USSR and its accompanying handouts, are not yet distant, and the ravages of three hurricanes which caused an estimated $10billion worth of damage last summer remain fresh in Cuban minds. In these difficult and worsening conditions, and with many Cuban youngsters increasingly viewing Castro Senior as an irrelevancy in their lives, it will be surprising if murmurs of dissent do not become louder.

 Where will this lead?

They are unlikely, however, to lead to an internal uprising. Across the straits in Washington, think-tanks will know that the Cuban political system has weathered many a storm before. Previous US Presidents have hoped unsuccessfully that crushing Cuba’s economy, by whatever means, will bring down Fidel Castro. They have been proven wrong.  For decades at least, the Revolution has been carried by a wave of popular support. The great irony is that, at the height of its popularity, the Revolution probably would have been sanctioned by democratic victory, had Fidel gone to the polls, not unlike the Allende government in Chile. But, almost certainly because of the almost-complete block on relations between the US and Cuba, there has never been a known attempted coup, whether supported by the US or otherwise. Raul has commanded the army with unprecedented levels of support in Latin America. For that reason alone, another revolution is not yet brewing in Cuba, no matter how discontented its inhabitants are.

 The younger sibling

True it is that Raul has never inspired the same influence and devotion that Fidel has instilled in many of his admirers. Historically he has been feared as being merciless and cold-blooded. He became infamous for refusing to tolerate “ideological diversionism” since the early 1970s. However, over the last decade, as the inevitable transition of power from the older to the younger brother has taken place, he has stepped back from his uncompromising image. In courting some form of positive relationship with the Americans, many Cubans believe that Raul is practical and so willing to engage in market reform.

 For now, however, Raul Castro has warned Cubans that they must work harder. They have heard this mantra many times before, from Fidel. Raul has stated categorically that the political and social system built during fifty years of Cuban struggle will continue long after the death of his older brother. Raul said last week that he was not “elected president to return capitalism to Cuba”, nor “to surrender the revolution”. He told the Assembly that he was “elected to defend, build and perfect socialism, not destroy it”.

 A birthday wish

When Fidel first came to power, he warned that if he was assassinated, those that came behind him carried even more hardline zeal. Far from being the soft touch that some predicted, Raul Castro is allowing his brother to limp back from the limelight with dignity, but is fundamentally unyielding to his brother’s ideals. He may be willing to make some compromises – perhaps Chinese style – to ensure that the Cuban suffering can be alleviated where possible, but the Cuban political system is not about to collapse. The real danger to Fidel’s ideology, and to his Cuban Revolution, will be if Raul, aged 78, becomes infirm or dies. No one has been groomed properly to take over the country. No credible internal opposition party exists. A power vacuum at that stage will almost guarantee interference from Washington, notwithstanding Obama’s overtures. On his 83^rd birthday, Fidel Castro will blow out his candles, wishing for his brother’s good health.

 11^th August 2009

India’s Legal Leap Towards Equality

In a historic moment for India’s equality movement, and in particular its Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual Transsexual (LGBT) community, the Delhi High Court has decriminalised homosexuality. In overturning section 377 Indian Penal Code, a law installed and left by the British almost 150 years ago which criminally penalised what were termed “unnatural offences”, the judgment is a massive victory for gay rights campaigners in a country where homosexuality is still a major taboo.

The campaign to repeal section 377

Millions of Indians have felt the bitter blow of section 377. The archaic law, left as an outdated and unwelcome legacy of colonialisation, has been the subject of an increasingly vocal campaign, both within India and outside. In the world’s biggest democracy, a law that seeks to exclude and criminalise a minority on grounds of their sexuality has been criticised rightfully by human rights organisations, such as Human Rights Watch, as well as local Indian organisations who have worked tirelessly to back changes in public attitudes. In 2006, Vikram Seth wrote an open letter to the Government of India campaigning for the repeal of the law which he branded “disgraceful”. The letter was signed by some of India’s most well known activists and public figures.

Amartya Sen added his voice to the plea, stating that “It is surprising that independent India has not yet been able to rescind the colonial era monstrosity in the shape of Section 377, dating from 1861.  That, as it happens, was the year in which the American Civil War began, which would ultimately abolish the unfreedom of slavery in America.  Today, 145 years later, we surely have urgent reason to abolish in India, with our commitment to democracy and human rights, the unfreedom of arbitrary and unjust criminalization”.

Just as in Europe, where the push for anti-discrimination measures has been viewed by lawyers and the legislative alike as a means for changing outdated public perceptions, so a change in the law in India has been argued as necessary in order to begin the long process of battling with negative and popular discriminatory attitudes towards the LGBT community.

 A colonial legacy

The judgment makes interesting historical reading. It charts the course of British anti-gay legislation, starting in 1290 where “sodomites” were to be punished by being burnt alive, and later to be hanged, under the Buggery Act 1533. In 1861, the death penalty for buggery was formally abolished in England and Wales, but the crime of homosexual relations remained punishable as an act “not to be mentioned by Christians”. The Indian Penal Code was drafted and introduced by the British in 1861. Although in England, homosexual relations between consenting adults over the age of 21 was decriminalised by the Sexual Offences Act in 1967, there is little doubt that the law did not correspond with Indian values at the time, but rather enforced British Juedeo-Christain values at the time.

The petitioners

The case was brought on public interest grounds by the Naz Foundation, backed by a number of other public health and human rights organisations including Voices against 377 and the National Aids Control Association of India, which is part of the Ministry of Health. They argued that the major discriminatory attitudes towards homosexuality created a significant impairment to proper HIV/AIDS prevention efforts, and perpetuated the public’s negative and discriminatory beliefs towards homosexuality. Moreover, it was argued that State agencies, and notably the police ritually abused the fundamental human rights of the gay and trans-gender community through detention and questioning, harassment, abuse, forced sex and payment of hush money.

 A brutalised community

The material provided to the Court provided numerous examples of a community brutalised by State-sanctioned mistreatment, torture and abuse. One such incident was called ‘the Bangalore incident, 2004′.  The victim was a hijra (eunuch) from Bangalore, who was at a public place dressed in female clothing. The person was subjected to gang rape, forced to have oral and anal sex by a group of hooligans. He was later taken to police station where he was stripped naked, handcuffed to the window, grossly abused and tortured simply on the grounds of his sexual identity. The Court was provided with many similar affidavits testifying to this terrifyingly common level of abuse.

 The right to dignity

Against the Indian government’s argument that public morality was enforced by the retention of this provision, and the many religious bodies in the country openly demonising homosexuality the Delhi High Court noted that “dignity of the individual ” was a concept rooted in the Indian Constitution, and  that “dignity is the autonomy of the private will and a person’s freedom of choice and of action .Human dignity rests on recognition of the physical and spiritual integrity of the human being, his or her humanity, and his value as a person, irrespective of the utility he can provide to others.” The Court held that section 377 violated Articles 21 (right to life and personal liberty), Article 14 (equality before law and equal protection from law) and Article 15 (prohibiting discrimination on several grounds including sex) The Court relied on the international Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, as well as looking outwards to international norms and legal judgments for affirmation that its own conclusions are now supported by a heavyweight legal and political community.

 Nehru and inclusiveness

Quoting Nehru, the Court stated that inclusiveness was a founding principle of the Indian Constitution. This Court believes that Indian Constitution reflects this value deeply  ingrained in Indian society, nurtured over several generations. The inclusiveness that Indian society traditionally displayed, literally in every aspect of life, is manifest in recognising a role in society for everyone. Those perceived by the majority as “deviants’ or ‘different’ are not on that score excluded or ostracized….It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is antithesis of equality and that it is the recognition of equality which will foster the dignity of every individual.”

 

The wheels of justice move slowly in India, and no doubt it will take a long time for the ramifications of the judgment to be felt across India society. Whilst Indian editorials and NGOS have welcomed the judgment with great celebration, religious bodies across the country agitate against it. For now, the decision is likely only to be effective in Delhi and is still subject to appeal in the Supreme Court. However, inclusiveness and equality have been pronounced to be the hallmarks of modern Indian society. It is a historic day not just for India, but for those in pursuit of equality everywhere.