Monthly Archives: September 2020

The trouble with crying wolf is that, eventually, the wolf gets a free pass, as people stop believing those warning cries and stop rushing out to chase away the predator. The wolf is real and deadly, only made unreal to decent folk by repeated false alarms. Threats to democracy fit the bill today: people are tired of repeated warnings, and threats to democracy enjoy a free ride.

The Delhi Police today would appear to be engineering a conspiracy about a conspiracy: apparently, leftists political leaders and intellectuals were conspiring to destabilise the state using protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and carried out the riots in northeast Delhi in February this year as part of the conspiracy. The police have arrested assorted activists and student leaders, including JNUs Umar Khalid, and have now named Sitaram Yechury, along with Yogendra Yadav, economist Jayati Ghosh and Delhi University professor Apoorvanand as possible conspirators.

In the cases registered by the Delhi police, the focus is solely on those who protested against CAA. BJP leaders who held rallies, threatening to take the law into their own hands if the anti-CAA protests were not lifted, are off the police radar.

This playbook looks as if it has been copied from the police action in the wake of the Bhima-Koregaon violence, which saw a Dalit activist killed and several injured during an attack on Dalit celebration of the 200th anniversary of the victory of Mahar troops of the British East India Company over the Peshwas army, ending Peshwa rule once and for all.

Initial reports blamed right-wing Hindutva groups for the violence, Prakash Ambedkar naming, according to news reports, Milind Ekbote and Sambhaji Bhide as organisers of the attack on the celebration of Dalit victory over Brahmin-Maratha oppression. After a Supreme Court prod, Ekbote was arrested. But the investigations into the role of right-wing organisations was abandoned after an eyewitness who had testified against them was found killed and her family members were charged with attempted murder.

A self-styled think tank conducted an inquiry into the violence and came up with the finding that an elaborate Maoist conspiracy was behind the whole thing. It chided the police for failing to act against this threat to social stability. The police of the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government swung into action and rounded up a number of activists and intellectuals, some from as far away as Delhi, such as Sudha Bharadwaj, lawyer and tribal rights activist, and human rights campaigner Gautam Navlakha.

When the government of Maharashtra changed, after the 2019 assembly elections, the Bhima-Koregaon investigation was taken over by the Central Bureau of Investigation, lest facts and evidence change, as they mysteriously tend to in this country, when the political executive overseeing an investigation changes.

Many of those arrested have been charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, which permits incarceration without bail for prolonged periods. Several of those arrested have been in jail for more than two years without the investigation progressing to prosecution or receiving bail.

In Delhi, too, a self-styled group of intellectuals have carried out an inquiry into the February riots and discovered a conspiracy to delegitimise the central government. Delhi Police, under its new Commissioner, whose letter to investigating officers cautioning against hurting the sensibilities of Hindu groups has no bearing, of course, on the nature of the investigations, has warmed up to the conspiracy theory. Anyone opposed to the CAA must have been conspiring to cause riots that would appear to be the working assumption of the investigation.

Liberty, equality and fraternity have been the watchwords of democracy, since the French Revolution. In India, fraternity has been trampled into the mud by rioters and lynch mobs. Equality has been given a formal farewell with the Citizenship Amendment Act that diminishes the quality of Muslim citizenship. If anyone thought that liberty could not survive on its own, they should suppress the urge to cry wolf.

The newly created Uttar Pradesh Special Security Force might come after them. It has been given powers to arrest and search people without a warrant and is obliged to hand over their detainees to the regular force without delay. The degree of urgency that determines what constitutes delay has been left undefined. It would be no surprise if those who disturb the peace with wanton cries of a lupine attack attract the attention of the new Force.

The wolf is amongst us, sometimes in sheeps clothing: social media trolls baying for the blood of anyone questioning the official narrative, editors who allow media management of the sort that sweeps aside pestilence, stark economic distress and barbarians at the gates, in favour of some Bollywood drama with its own tragic victims; an Opposition too scared of being branded a Muslim party to come to the aid of those victimised by the state; judges who accept evidence in sealed envelopes, as if this were compatible with the Constitutions mandate for procedure established by law.

If the bleat coming out of that sheep near you sounds a gravelly bit like a growl, do get your ears checked.

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View: Stop crying wolf over democracy, enjoy the quality of sheeps clothing - Economic Times

Last month, the conservative philosopher Yoram Hazony published an essay in Quillette on The Challenge of Marxism. Hazony is known for his 2018 book The Virtue of Nationalism, which lodged some valid critiques of liberalism, but was ultimately unconvincing in its effort to reframe nationalism as an anti-imperialist endeavor. His chosen exemplars included the United Kingdom, France, and the United States all countries with long histories of colonialism and expansionism.

With his new essay, Hazony has jumped into the culture wars, attempting to explain and criticize the astonishingly successful Marxist takeover of companies, universities and schools, major corporations and philanthropic organizations, and even the courts, the government bureaucracy, and some churches. He concludes with a call for liberals to unite with conservatives to halt this takeover, lest the dastardly Marxists achieve their goal of conquering liberalism itself.

Hazonys essay, though long and detailed, has many flaws. In the end, its less a compelling takedown of contemporary leftists than another illustration of why conservatives should read Marx.

Hazony opens his essay with an odd claim. Contemporary Marxists, he argues, arent willing to wear their colors proudly, instead attempting to disorient their opponents by referring to their beliefs with a shifting vocabulary of terms, including the Left, Progressivism, Social Justice, Anti-Racism, Anti-Fascism, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, Identity Politics, Political Correctness, Wokeness, and more. Nonetheless the essence of the political left remains staunchly Marxist, building upon Marxs framework as Hazony understands it.

For him, Marxism has four characteristics. First, it is based on an oppressor/oppressed narrative, viewing people as invariably attached to groups that exploit one another. Second, it posits a theory of false consciousness where the ruling class and their victims may be unaware of the exploitation occurring, since it is obscured by the ruling ideology. Third, Marxists demand the revolutionary reconstitution of society through the destruction of the ruling class and its ideology. And finally, once the revolution is accomplished, a classless society will emerge.

This account ignores a tremendous amount of what makes Marxism theoretically interesting, focusing instead on well-known tropes and clichs. It is startling, but telling, that Hazony never once approaches Marxism as a critique of political economy, even though Marx was kind enough to label two of his books critiques of political economy. By effacing this fundamental characteristic of Marxism, Hazony reduces it to a simplistic doctrine that could be mapped onto more or less anything.

If it is true that Marxism is just an oppressor/oppressed narrative with some stuff about a ruling ideology and revolution tacked on, then mostly every revolutionary movement through history has been Marxist even before Marx lived. The American revolutionaries who criticized the ruling ideology of monarchism and waged a war for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would fit three of Hazonys four characteristics, making them borderline proto-Marxists. About the only thing that remains of what distinguished Marx in Hazonys account is his claim that we are moving toward a classless society, something about which the German critic wrote very little.

Marxism is a very specific modernist doctrine, inspired by the events and ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Marx drew on three dominant currents in European thought at the time: the German philosophical reaction to Hegel, French radicalism, and English political economy.

From Hegel, Marx took the idea that history is the story of humanity moving toward greater freedom, understood by both Hegel and Marx as the capacity for self-determination. Marx famously attempted to turn Hegel right side up by contending that the renowned philosophers emphasis on ideas was misguided: material relations, Marx argued, largely moved history forward. From French radicalism, Marx took the idea of a class conflict between workers and the bourgeoisie. He was certain that one day we would live in a classless society, where every individual could develop each side of their nature.

And from the English political economists, Marx took much of his understanding about how capitalism worked; in particular, he drew on David Ricardo to argue that the exchange value of commodities lay in the socially necessary labor time invested in them. This last point was important for Marx circa Capital Volume One, since it seemed to explain the mechanism of workers exploitation. As David Harvey has pointed out, in the later posthumous volumes things become more complicated as Marx began to theorize on the nature of fictitious capital in the stock and credit markets. These developments demonstrated how capitalism was able to adapt to its own contradictions, but only through quick fixes that left the fundamental tensions intact and could even sharpen them over time.

This quick summary by no means captures the breadth of Marxs work. But it should at least suggest how much richer Marxism is than the simple antagonisms Hazony puts forward.

This tendency for crude simplification extends to Hazonys treatment of neo-Marxism, which he associates with successor movements led by Michel Foucault, postmodernism, and more including the Progressive or Anti-Racism movement now advancing toward the conquest of liberalism in America and Britain. But how or why these movements owe much, if anything, to Marxism is left extremely vague. Michel Foucault famously denigrated Marxism as outdated nineteenth-century economics and even flirted with neoliberalism. So much for class conflict as the engine of history. As for the anti-racist movements gathering steam across the world, theyre more likely to look to Martin Luther King and other totems of the black freedom struggle than Marx.

None of this is to say these movements dont or shouldnt draw from Marx (they should!). But reducing them to simply updated Marxism ignores the particularities and histories of progressive figures and movements rather ironic given that Hazony spends a great deal of The Virtue of Nationalism arguing for the benefits of a world of particular nations, each with its own identity, history, and customs that warrant respect.

Later in his essay, Hazony makes the novel decision to criticize liberals who believe Marxism is nothing but a great lie. This isnt because he wishes to praise Marxisms theoretical insights or political ambitions, but because he shares its progenitors critical appraisal of liberal individualism.

Hazony argues Marx was well aware that the liberal conception of the individual self, possessing rights and liberties secured by the state, was an ideological and legal fiction. While liberals felt that the modern state had provided full liberty for all, Hazony takes the Marxist insight to be that there will always be disparities in power between social groups, and the more powerful will always oppress or exploit the weaker. As he puts it:

Marx is right to see that every society consists of cohesive classes or groups, and that political life everywhere is primarily about the power relations among different groups. He is also right that at any given time, one group (or a coalition of groups) dominates the state, and that the laws and policies of the state tend to reflect the interests and ideals of this dominant group. Moreover, Marx is right when he says that the dominant group tends to see its own preferred laws and policies as reflecting reason or nature, and works to disseminate its way of looking at things throughout society, so that various kinds of injustice and oppression tend to be obscured from view.

Hazony goes on to criticize American liberals for pushing secularization and liberalization, particularly by excluding religion from schools and permitting pornography, which amount to quiet persecution of religious families. Liberals tend to be systematically blind to the oppression they wreak against conservatives, merely assuming that their doctrines provide liberty and equality for all. Hazony thinks Marx was far savvier in recognizing that by analyzing society in terms of power relations among classes or groups, we can bring to light important political phenomena to which Enlightenment liberal theories theories that tend to reduce politics to the individual and his or her private liberties are systematically blind.

None of this means Hazony is sympathetic to the idea that workers are the victims of exploitation or anything else that smacks of left-wing critique. Later in the essay, he criticizes Marxism for having three fatal flaws. First, Marxists assume any form of power relation is a relationship of oppressor and oppressed, even though some are mutually beneficial. Second, they believe that social oppression must be so great that any given society will inevitably be fraught with tension, leading to its eventual overthrow. And finally, Marx and Marxists are notoriously vague about the specifics of post-oppression society, and their actual track record is a parade of horrors.

Of the three, only the last strikes me as at all compelling. It is true that Marx never spelled out what a postcapitalist society would look like, and this ambiguity has led to figures like Stalin invoking his theories to justify tyranny. Socialists are better-off confronting this problem than pretending it doesnt exist, which makes us easier prey for critiques like Hazonys.

But whatever Marx intended, we can infer from his Critique of the Gotha Program that he wanted a democratic society free of exploitation, where the means of production were owned in common and distribution was organized according to the principle from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Whatever that might look like, it bears little resemblance to the litany of dictatorships conservatives love to point to when trashing Marxism. (Conservatives critics also skate by the central role that class struggle and Marxist-inspired parties played in building social democracies, even if those societies never transcended capitalism.)

There are big problems with pretty much every other feature of Hazonys analysis of the flaws of Marxism and leftism. Hazony never takes on the specifically Marxist point that the relation between capital and labor is indeed oppressive and exploitative a key point, since Marx never claimed that all types of power relations or hierarchies were illegitimate. His argument was far more specific: capitalist relations were oppressive because they were based on the systematic exploitation of labor.

Hazony might have been on firmer ground with his second criticism if hed leaned into his critique of the teleological vision of history, which led some classical Marxists to claim capitalism was going to inevitably fall and be replaced by communism. But his contention doesnt even rise to this level. Instead, he wants to argue that in a conservative society, it is possible weaker groups [would] benefit from their position, or at least are better-off than in a revolutionarily reconstituted polity.

And this is where things get interesting.

Hazony isnt fond of liberalism. He sees American liberalism in particular as an oppressive force that has bullied religious and conservative families by advancing a pornographic, secular agenda. But Hazony is also deeply anxious that liberals will ally with progressive and Marxist groups the great evil, in his mind to further corrode conservatism.

In the most insightful part of his essay, Hazony describes the dance of liberalism and Marxism. Liberals and Marxists both believe in freedom and equality, and both are hostile to inherited traditions and hierarchies. Marxists and other progressives just take things a step further by arguing that real freedom and equality havent been achieved because of capitalism and other elements of liberal society. Under the right conditions, Hazony argues, liberals might become sympathetic to these arguments, since they often draw on the principles and rhetoric of liberalism. Liberals might even start pushing a Marxist agenda.

Hazony, then, isnt criticizing Marxism in the name of defending liberalism. What he is doing trying to entice centrists to side with the political right rather than the political left. He is willing to tolerate liberals as part of an alliance to prevent the Marxist conquest of society.

To make this attractive to liberals, Hazony raises the stakes by suggesting the political left wants to destroy democracy and eliminate both conservatives and liberals. He argues that both conservatives and liberals are distinct in allowing at minimum a two-party system dominated by themselves. By contrast, Marxists are only willing to confer legitimacy on ... one political party the party of the oppressed, whose aim is the revolutionary reconstitution of society. And this means that the Marxist political framework cannot co-exist with democratic government.

This is patently wrong. One of socialists ambitions since the nineteenth century has been to advance democracy in the political sphere, which is why they were central to the struggle for workers suffrage in Europe and elsewhere. Socialists deplore liberal capitalism for not being democratic enough. Likewise, the other progressive groups denigrated in Hazonys essay are hardly foes of democracy: anti-racist movements have been agitating against voter suppression.

It is also telling that Hazonys essay ignores the antidemocratic efforts of contemporary conservative strongmen, from Viktor Orbns dismantling of democracy in Hungary to Trumps flirtations with canceling the 2020 election. Probably a savvy move given that none of this supports Hazonys contention that liberal democrats have nothing to fear from aligning with the political right.

Interestingly, Hazonys essay skirts near a deep insight, before rushing away, perhaps for tactical reasons. The insight: both liberalism and Marxism properly understood are eminently modernist doctrines. Both emerged within a few centuries of each other and are committed to the principles of respecting moral equality by securing freedom for all.

The march of liberalism and socialism have razed traditionalist orders and hierarchies that insisted on naturalizing inequities of power. These traditionalist orders were neither natural nor particularly beneficent, subordinating women, LGBT individuals, religious and ethnic minorities, and so on for millennia.

Liberalism often failed to live up to its principles, which is partly why the political left emerged and remains so necessary. Liberals often engaged in just the kind of tactical alliances with conservative traditionalists Hazony calls for in order to maintain unjustifiable hierarchies. But this alliance is always fraught, since a liberal who doesnt believe in freedom and equality for all is no liberal.

The same is true of those of us on the political left, except we believe that these ideals cannot be achieved within the bounds of the liberal state and ideology. More radical reforms are needed to complete the historical process of emancipation from necessity and exploitation, though what reforms and how radical are matters of substantial debate. (My own preference is for what the philosopher John Rawls would call liberal socialism.)

All this brings us squarely back to Karl Marx, who was very aware of these dynamics. With Engels, he applauded liberal capitalism for both its productive capacity and, for the first time, enshrining formal equality for all. It had achieved this precisely by upending the old traditionalist order, profaning all that was sacred, and forcing humanity to face up to its real conditions for the first time.

But liberalism remained just one stage in the movement of history, and like all before it would eventually give way to a new form of society. Whether this is inevitable, as Marx sometimes seemed to imply, there are indeed many limitations to liberal democracy as it exists today. Liberals sincerely committed to freedom and equality should recognize that and ask if they are better-off allied to a political right committed to turning back the clock or striding into the future with progressives and socialists who share many of their fundamentally modernist convictions.

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Why Liberals Should Unite With Socialists, Not the Right - Jacobin magazine

Few know about James Baldwin's years spent in Turkey. "I can't breathe, I have to look from the outside," he once remarked when asked why in 1961 he began visiting Istanbul on and off for a decade. Turkey offered him a space to escape from the racism and homophobia he experienced in the United States, but also to reflect more deeply on who he was.

He once reminisced about eating lunch with Turkish filmmaker Sedat Pakay and Greek actress Irene Pappas, who commented to Pakay, "Look at those eyes, 400 years of oppression in them."

The Ottoman enslavement of Greeks and Armenians and Mustafa Kemal Atatrk's genocide and expulsion of them in the early 20th century are vastly distinct phenomena from the transatlantic slave trade and Jim Crow laws in the U.S. But both of our countries have constructed myths to conceal these ugly realities that they are founded upon.

"It is, of course, in the very nature of a myth that those who are its victims and, at the same time, its perpetrators, should, by virtue of these two facts, be rendered unable to examine the myth, or even to suspect, much less recognize, that it is a myth which controls and blasts their lives."

Baldwin continues to say in his 1964 essay "Nothing Personal" that this "blindness," this willful forgetfulness of one's history and the injustices committed, is a cause of "spiritual disaster," not only for the oppressed, but even more so for the oppressor.

When I heard the news about Hagia Sophia being converted from a museum to a mosque, I instantly thought back to Baldwin's words. Turkey's insistence on denying the 400 years of enslavement, the millions of lives killed, and suppression of the Orthodox Christian community is a denial of Turkey's identity.

Turkey's culture is a rich tapestry weaving together the threads of the Seljuks and Ottomans, the Greeks, Armenians, and Turks, Christians and Muslims, people of all different shades and skin tones, leaders who have committed heinous atrocities and who have led the country to new heights. To deny any of the complexities and nuances of this history is to blind oneself to the reality of what it means to be Turkish.

I remember my first time visiting Hagia Sophia. I was with my grandfather, who was born in Istanbul to Greek and Armenian parents. This was his first time back in 35 years. He presented his native city to me with pride, tinged with a hint of anguish. He complained to me after our first night there of nightmares of being attacked for being an "infidel."

And yet, Istanbul remains his city. His mixture of Greek, Armenian and Turkish blood, his Orthodox Christian faith, has left its indelible mark on the city, and will continue to do so ... even if the majority of Armenians and Greeks were murdered, and the remainder left along with him in the '50s, and the Christians that make up less than 1% of Istanbul's population including the ecumenical patriarch continue to face restrictions.

The virtue of leaving Hagia Sophia as a museum is that it allows people to feel that complex mix of emotions pride and sadness, appreciation and shame that the space evokes. The Byzantine mosaics and Islamic calligraphy speak to the value of both religions and the ethnic groups that adhered to each, as well as the injustices that have been perpetrated throughout the centuries not only Muslim against Christian, but also Christian against Muslim and Christian against Christian (our tour guided pointed to a red mark on the wall, claiming that it was the bloody handprint of a Catholic in the Fourth Crusade).

The systemic denial of the Armenian Genocide and expulsion of Christians continues to be a point of contention to this day. I recounted the story of my great grandmother's escape from Izmir to the island of Chios during the expulsion of 1922 to a new Turkish friend I met in college, hoping that sharing this with her could be an opportunity for healing and reconciliation. "There was no genocide," she proclaimed, irritated with my presumption. "It's all propaganda from the American government."

"So then why did my great grandmother see Turkish soldiers raping and mutilating women as she was running to the port?"

"It's not the Turkish government's fault that some soldiers decided to do those things on their own."

I felt pity. Such blindness can hardly be liberating. Thus my concern for those who would be praying the following afternoon in the newly minted mosque. Can one freely commune with God Allah while being in denial of reality? Can Muslims and Christians love and dialogue with each other, seek the Mystery of the Divine together, while shielding our faces from the truth?

That Friday at 4 p.m. EST, I attended the Akathist service at my family's Greek Orthodox parish, joined spiritually by other Orthodox, Catholic, and hopefully Muslim communities, to beg God for the gifts of repentance and reconciliation, and of the honesty and courage to embrace reality, to embrace history, in all of its grace and ugliness.

During the service, I thought about Baldwin's words in "Nothing Personal." I thought about the blindness of the slave traders to their own humanity, their own need for love and intimacy, which drove them to dehumanize other human beings, and in the process, dehumanize themselves. It was their insecure attachment to wealth, power and complacency that drove them to perpetuate this lie, this false divide between brothers and sisters, by any means necessary. Baldwin recognizes, however, that this blindness, this affinity for mendacity, is not only an American phenomenon. It's a temptation that humans throughout the world are subject to.

We live by lies. And not only, for example, about race whatever, by this time, in this country, or, indeed, in the world, this word may mean but about our very natures. The lie has penetrated to our most private moments, and the most secret chambers of our hearts. Nothing more sinister can happen, in any society, to any people. And when it happens, it means that the people are caught in a kind of vacuum between their present and their past the romanticized, that is, the maligned past, and the denied and dishonored present. It is a crisis of identity. And in such a crisis, at such a pressure, it becomes absolutely indispensable to discover, or invent the two words, here, are synonyms the stranger, the barbarian, who is responsible for our confusion and our pain. Once he is driven out destroyed then we can be at peace: those questions will be gone. Of course, those questions never go, but it has always seemed much easier to murder than to change. And this is really the choice with which we are confronted now.

The prayers of the Akathist service brought me back to the roots of this blindness which are as old as the fall. But it also placed me in front of a promise, a glint of hope, that is born from entrusting our fears, sins, and woundedness to the New Adam and Eve.

The news of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision to convert the Kariye Museum (formerly the Holy Savior church) in Chora to a mosque brought me back to Baldwin's words. One who is determined to remain blind to reality, to perpetuate a division between us and them, must continuously strive to eliminate history. I continue to offer my prayer to the Divine Healer of wounds and to his Mother, ever more fervently, and united more deeply in solidarity with all of those whose stories face the threat of erasure from history.

[Stephen Adubato studied moral theology at Seton Hall University and currently teaches religion in New Jersey. He also blogs at Cracks in Postmodernity on the Patheos Catholic Channel.]

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James Baldwin, blindness and Hagia Sophia - National Catholic Reporter

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By Elinoro Vronique Rajaonah

Film Review: The Art of Fallism

The Art of Fallism, directed by Aslaug Aarsther and Gunnbjrg Gunnarsdttir, is the story of the South African student protests of 2015, one that made headline news and reverberated around the world and was chronicled with hashtags like #RhodesMustFall.

But it is also an insiders account of the tensions and contradictions within the activism movement that was demanding better from their school administrations and the government.

Using a mix of talking heads and on-the-ground coverage of the struggle at the University of Cape Town, The Art of Fallism chronicles the courage and motivations of the students at the forefront of the various fallist movements. The film is also a story of inclusivity that allows for a diversity of voices that were at least in theory, united by a common cause.

This documentary gives voice to the activists, to the struggles as well as the microaggressions that arose from the movement, highlighting the often sidelined voices of women and the trans community. In this way The Art of Fallism feels like a corrective to many of the historical struggles that often centre on the actions of (white) men. As though they were the only actors. Audiences are able to grasp how fundamentally flawed many movements can be when they make no room for inclusion and shared responsibilities.

The Art of Fallism critiques the kind of society that elevates violence as the only response to oppression. In such instances, power becomes a prize to be seized by the loudest and the strongest, leaving minorities as dispensable, to be used and dispatched soon after. It doesnt only accuse the system but also the movement, indicting people who would rather look away from oppression of any other group, as long as the problem doesnt affect them.

If there is any lesson that The Art of Fallism offers, it is that unfair structures must be dismantled. But while doing so, a lot of deliberate introspection is mandatory so that at the end of the day oppressors aren't simply replaced, but are made redundant.

* The Art of Fallism can be viewed free online at the Durban International Film Festival here until September 20. View the trailer here.

* Elinoro Vronique Rajaonah is a young Malagasy film critic, who has been critiquing films for two years. She has always been fascinated by visual arts, is an illustrator and has a keen interest in storytelling. Rajaonah participated in the recent Talents Press, an initiative of Talents Durban in collaboration with the Durban FilmMart.

The Independent on Saturday

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The Art of Fallism: The fight of a lifetime - IOL

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In 2013, Pakistan was gearing up to witness its first civilian transfer of power, having been ruled over for more than half the years since independence by the military.

Three days before the general elections of that year, journalist Declan Walsh, former correspondent for The Guardian and the New York Times bureau chief in Pakistan, returned to his home in Islamabad, Pakistans posh capital. To his surprise, security officials were at his door. They handed over his expulsion letter and asked him to leave the country within 72 hours. Walsh couldnt challenge the order and the reasons for his expulsion remained unknown at that moment.

Over seven years later, Walshs second book The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Divided Nation, was published by Bloomsbury UK on September 3. The book is based on Walshs time working in Pakistan more than a decade in total. Walsh uses nine lives from Pakistan to tell the story of one of the worlds most perplexing (and misunderstood) countries. Along the way, he deconstructs the countrys power dynamics, ethnic and religious conflicts, and identity crisis all of which he argues pose a bigger threat for Pakistan than the much touted dangers from the Taliban. Walsh also talks about his expulsion and experiences reporting out of Pakistan in the book.

The Diplomats Shah Meer Baloch interviewed Declan Walsh about his latest book, Pakistan, regional politics, media freedom, and more.Below are excerpts.

Shah Meer Baloch: How representative are these nine lives for a diverse and complicated country such as Pakistan?

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Declan Walsh: No group of nine, or even ninety-nine, lives could do justice to a country as diverse, tumultuous or intricately fascinating as Pakistan. And the goal is not to represent, but to understand. I chose to write about this group of people because their stories helped me to understand the country, not only through the dramatic events they became swept up in, and in many cases were consumed by kidnappings, uprisings, assassinations but also because their experiences were a window on the eternal themes that have dogged Pakistan since its birth in 1947: identity, faith, and a sense of unresolved history. Im wary of writers who speak about countries in general terms Pakistanis think this or Egyptians like that and, in that sense, there are many potential nine lives. But these were the ones that opened a window on the country for me and, hopefully, for my readers.

From Salman Taseer to Anwar Kamal Khan, as you showed, most Pakistani politicians have contradictory public and private identities. What are the consequences of these contradictions on Pakistani politics and society?

At first glance, Pakistan seems to be filled with stark contradictions. An observant Muslim may say his or her prayers then guzzle whiskey after dinner; even socially liberally people might hide important details about their lives from their own families. Westerners often take these contradictions for hypocrisies. But after a while, I started to see them through the lens of public and private spheres that allow a kind of tolerance. In Pakistan, and perhaps South Asia more generally, many people enjoy greater freedoms and more permissive lives than outward appearances suggest. Their neighbors or parents or village mullah may well be aware of this the important thing is not to rub it in everyones face. This isnt always a force for good, and it can certainly retard social progress, but its not all bad either.

The book has an immense literary touch. Youre quoting Sadat Hasan Manto, a giant of 20th century Urdu literature, with regard to Pakistani history, culture, and politics. How and why did Manto seem relevant to contemporary Pakistan?

Manto is best known for his short storyToba Tek Singh, a powerful parable about the absurdities of Partition in 1947. But Mantos other writings, and many of his real-life experiences, foreshadowed the issues that still loom large. He wrote fearlessly about the countrys troubled nationalism, the instrumentalization of blasphemy, and the schisms that cut across society, in stories and essays that, with some tweaks, could have been written today. His work is also graphic, earthy, and filled with a cheeky and subversive humor that is true to the best work on Pakistan. Manto is the ultimate antidote to the saccharine portraits of what Pakistan is, or could be, that are favored by Pakistanis ideologues.

We learn fromthe book that there was a plot to kill veteran activist Asma Jahangir when she opened up against human rights abuses in Balochistan. Journalist Hamid Mir survived a suicide attempt when he reported about the human rights violation and insurgency in the same province. You were expelled from Pakistan for reporting on Balochistan. Whats the reason behind Balochistans information blackhole and what can the media do when there is no access?

Balochistan is the story nobodys heard of outside Pakistan, and few inside the country are particularly aware of. Its strange, just by dint of its size and location: This is a province that accounts for 43 percent of the landmass of a sizable country, wedged between Iran and Afghanistan. And its always been a reluctant part of Pakistan, with periodic uprisings against the central government since the 1940s. Part of the obscurity stems from the fact that its latest revolt, that started in the mid-2000s, is relatively small in size, and, from a Western perspective, of limited interest because the rebels leading it do not, for the most part, subscribe to an extremist Islamic ideology.

Get first-read access to major articles yet to be released, as well as links to thought-provoking commentaries and in-depth articles from our Asia-Pacific correspondents.

But I came to realize that the conflict had an importance greater than its size. It was a product of a powerful fault line that runs deep across the length of Pakistan the tension between the marginalized people of the peripheries and a powerful, army-dominated center. Theres been periodic uprising by disgruntled Sindhis, Pashtuns, and Balochs, always directed at Punjab and military-centric governments. And that, in turn, stems from the great unresolved question: what do they all share, as Pakistanis? The original idea Islam is clearly not enough.

You describe Pakistans central debate as between two frontiers Anwar Kamal Khan representing the old ways, Baitullah Mehsud as the harbinger of a new order that justified its violence with a lumpen version of sharia law. You extensively relied on these two identities to frame the book, while overlooking the current non-violent movement in former Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and their stories of standing against both identities and even the atrocities of the Pakistan establishment.

Youre referring to the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement or PTM, a major Pashtun civil rights group that rose to prominence in recent years, as I was finishing the book. The PTM wasnt around a decade ago, when I was hanging out with Anwar Kamal, the Pashtun politician who waged a private war against the Taliban. At that time, the honorable Pashtun tradition of pacifist politics was represented by the Awami National Party, a party rooted in the anti-colonial-struggle of the 1920s and 1930s, then struggling for survival. A string of Taliban suicide attacks devastated the party, killing several of its leaders and, ultimately, driving it out of its urban stronghold in Karachi.

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Since then, the PTM has clawed back some of that ground, thanks to the charisma of its young leader, Manzoor Pashteen, and to the appeal of a message that inspires Pashtuns tired of being portrayed as either Taliban terrorists or the victims of violence. I do mention the phenomenon in the book, though, through the story of a former intelligence officer who approached me after I was expelled from Pakistan. He had worked with the spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and painted a frank picture of how the agency worked from the inside. When I met him in Europe where he lives in exile, I asked what motivated him to come forward. It partly came down to his identity as a Pashtun.

Unlike many Western journalists who focus more on a country crippled grappled with terrorism and religious extremism, you have deconstructed Pakistan in an unprecedented way in the book while depicting ethnic and religious identities and their looming threats over the country and the powerful military playing the shots. How do you see the future of Pakistan?

The terrifying wave of Islamist militancy suicide bombings and many thousands of deaths that threatened to rip Pakistan apart for about a decade following the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad in 2007 has thankfully receded. But the issues that gave rise to the militant explosion remain unresolved. Much evidence suggests that Pakistans generals have not renounced their ardor for the Islamist proxy fighters who have wreaked so much havoc. But they have, for expedient political and financial reasons, forced many of these groups underground for now. And the rivalry with India, which has driven that policy for decades, has only gotten worse, in part as a result of the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi. So while things have quieted in Pakistan there is little reason to believe, alas, that they will stay like that.

Do you think new geopolitical alignments and Pakistans inclination toward China and the enmity for India will bring more oppression for ethnic minorities in Pakistan amid the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)?

Pakistans pivot towards China goes back decades dont forget, it was one of a handful of countries that publicly supported Beijing after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre because China offers cherished support to Pakistans military, such as covert assistance with the nuclear weapons program, without the kind of demands made by the United States and other Western countries about cracking down on Islamist militancy. As relations with Washington reached a nadir following the operation to capture Osama bin Laden, Islamabad moved even closer to China, in the shape of the China-Pakistan Economic corridor, originally valued at $46 billion.

But despite the rhetoric about a boundless China-Pakistan relationship higher than the mountains, deeper than the seas I suspect there are limits, and I think they are becoming more apparent. Chinese loans and other financial assistance can carry a high cost, and as the coronavirus pandemic exacts a stiff economic price in the coming years, we may see China call in its chips with countries like Pakistan. Chinas harsh treatment of its own Muslim citizens in western Xinjiang province is likely to strain relations, no matter how much Prime Minister Imran Khan tries to glass over the story (or pretend he hasnt read the reports of those abuses).

Lastly, can you shareany memories of the senorita,as you call her in her profile, the prominent human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir who called spade a spade? After she passed away following a stroke in 2018, how big a vacuum did her death create in Pakistani civil society?

After Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad in 2011, Jahangir redoubled her criticism of the Pakistans most powerful generals, calling for their budgets to be slashed and their powers to bereined. Useless duffers, she memorably called them on television. Thats perilous talk in Pakistan at the best of times, but in that tense moment, with the army particularly sensitive to criticism, it was borderline foolhardy. About a month after bin Ladens death, an investigative journalist named Saleem Shahzad was found dead floating in a canal, with signs of torture. Most journalistsblamed the spy agency. In an interview a few days later, Jahangir was asked if it was not dangerous to continue with her caustic, mocking attacks on the military. Im sure it is, she replied. But we all live dangerous lives here. And so it remains, for those who speak truth to power in Pakistan.

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Declan Walsh on the 'Nine Lives of Pakistan' - The Diplomat

Months into the global COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers have begun discussing what the new normal might look like in metropolitan environments. Some urban planners have framed COVID-19 as an opportunity to re-imagine and improve cities built landscapes.

Such calls follow a common prescriptive: that post-epidemic planning will reinvent cities into dreamscapes of public health, equality and technological progress.

Urbanism journalist Alissa Walker recently argued, though, that now is not the time for imagining an urbanist utopia. Instead, she writes, people must come to terms with the historical processes that have

made COVID-19 more catastrophic than it should have been.

Doing so, argues Walker, requires an honest accounting of the role that fields like urban planning, public health and social work have played in producing urban inequality.

The connection between these fields has roots in 19th and 20th-century empire. Throughout much of the African continent, colonial officials exploited outbreaks of disease to implement racial segregation and create economic systems that intentionally marginalised Africans.

We are historians of Ghana, each currently writing about a different major city. These are Kumasi, Accra and Sekondi-Takoradi. In our research efforts and in those of many other scholars weve repeatedly seen how medical experts and modernist urban planners exploited outbreaks of disease.

Their efforts legitimised emerging systems of technical expertise and advanced white supremacy, global capitalism and imperial order. Those practices, which sidelined indigenous values and systems in favour of Western models, are reproduced through urban planning, public health, and development practice in cities across the continent.

There is persistent surprise at the low levels of COVID-19 infection on the continent. There are also inaccurate predictions about its potentially deadly consequences. This suggests that Western models continue to operate as African and global leaders grapple with COVID-19.

In the late 19th century, colonial governments often gave medical authorities wide latitude as the de facto architects of urban space. This was inspired by outdated scientific theories of contagion and disease. As the field of urban planning emerged in the 20th century, its practitioners built on these earlier models, reinforcing existing patterns of racial segregation and economic inequality.

Take the example of Accra, the Ghanaian capital city. It became the capital of the country then called Gold Coast in 1877. After 1877, British officials sought to decongest the city centre so that they could better control populations and create space for their own administrative and economic activities.

Their efforts were most effective in the aftermath of epidemics and natural disasters. These were occasions when urgent public health needs emboldened official action and left local communities vulnerable. Following the citys first plague outbreak in 1908, colonial officials evacuated the most congested districts and moved residents to safe peripheral areas. An earthquake in 1939 inspired additional relocations, allowing the government to seize land for its own purposes.

Similar patterns unfolded in the second city of Kumasi, a regional trade hub. In 1924, residents experienced their first plague. Shortly thereafter, they experienced drastic spatial changes in the name of sanitation and urban order. Making a safer Kumasi began with the state-sponsored destruction of the citys zongo or majority Muslim quarters. Sites were redeveloped for European residential, commercial or recreational needs. Former residents were shuttled into government-built houses not suited to healthy urban life.

In the port town of Sekondi-Takoradi, now a joint city, outbreaks of disease real and imagined were frequent flashpoints for the flexing of urban planning and public health muscle.

In 1940, Takoradi became home to a British Royal Air Force base and Allied aircraft assembly station. Experts designed a plan to demolish city structures and erect armed roadblocks to protect British and American soldiers from malaria. As one city resident quipped nearly 30 years earlier, the real disease that prompted such emergency measures was that of racial prejudice.

These examples emphasise two fundamental points. The first is that urban planning models and expertise were tethered to the interests of British Empire and oppression of colonised people.

In cities like Accra and Kumasi, which had been settled long before the arrival of the British, outbreaks of disease were opportunities to remake the towns and seize land from local residents. In the planned town of Takoradi, concerns about disease gave planners another chance to control urban residents. Their efforts produced two distinct zones for the colonised and the colonisers.

Second, colonial state planning and public health efforts often targeted, and at times destroyed, local forms of urban knowledge and city design. In many cases, local sanitation and hygiene practices were far more effective than those touted by European experts.

The resilience of African urban spatial, social and economic cultures in the face of this social engineering warrants more attention. But its also important to acknowledge the spatial, cultural, and economic violence that people endured in the name of urban improvements.

These kinds of reflections are important in Ghana right now, as the Accra Metropolitan Assembly continues to demolish homes in working-class communities in Accra.

The patterns of colonial spatial violence that played out in Ghanaian cities echo around the world. Contemporary debates about gentrification, inequality and social determinants of health in 21st-century cities point to the importance of revisiting the politics of colonial capitalism and public health.

Building new cities needs to start with new conversations that place cities like Accra, Kumasi and Sekondi-Takoradi at their centre. It must recognise the thinking that pervades professional fields charged with improving urban life. This process starts with seeing and listening to the communities that experts have long excluded from policy debates.

An earlier version of this article appeared in Nursing Clio.

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Urban planning needs to look back first: three cities in Ghana show why - The Conversation CA