From Delhi to Ferguson

AFTER ROBUST support from students and organizations at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for the protest march on November 29 in solidarity with the Ferguson uprisings, we, along with the JNU Students' Union, called for a demonstration at the U.S. embassy. From the very outset, it was evident where the allegiances of the police lay.

They stopped us three times, despite us having informed them of our protest beforehand; first, at R.K. Puram in Sector 6, where they had us wait 45 minutes to "speak to the authorities" from the police station near the embassy. After much heated negotiation and an all-out show of outrage by protesters, they relented and said that we could proceed to a school (of all the places) half a kilometer away from the embassy, provided we agreed to be escorted by them. This was when their escort vehicle tried to misdirect our bus away from the embassy to Jantar Mantar, which is a "safe spot" to dump all protests in, away from the ivory towers of power and privilege.

We stopped on the Ring Road before Africa Avenue and blocked traffic on that side for about 10 minutes, after which the police once again conceded ground and allowed us passage towards the embassy. Soon after, we reached a bigger contingent of police at the Chanakyapuri Bridge near the Leela Hotel, who tried their best to dissuade us once again from moving towards the embassy. This time, they threatened us with detention, while a truck bearing a water cannon was already lurking behind our bus. After more negotiations and consistent pressure-building by chanting slogans, we pushed forward on our final ride to Carmel Convent School near the embassy.

The police were ready in their riot gear, brandishing lathis, and the water cannon was still behind us. Upon reaching them, they barricaded the road before the school that led to the embassy. We continued chanting there, and all of us had a sit-in as the police hovered in anticipation. American as well as Indian students spoke on the rampant militarization and white supremacy in the U.S., as well as revitalized caste-ism and racism in the Indian context, which are connected and fed by the same neoliberal enterprise between the ruling classes of both countries.

THE PROTESTS that broke out in the U.S. are not merely concerned with the recent events in Ferguson or New York City and the non-indictments that followed; they are expression of the brutal reality that every 28 hours, a Black man is killed by cops or racist "vigilantes" (as some in the media have chosen to call them) in the U.S. Comprising only little over a tenth of the population of the U.S., African Americans make up a little less than half its prison population. Also, more than a quarter of the Black population in the U.S. is poor, even by government statistics, with a concomitantly high rate of unemployment.

These facts themselves show that the Black population, pushed to the fringes of U.S. society, is a highly brutalized and incarcerated community because it is the source of the greatest discontent with the American Dream. This provides us an apt picture to compare the situation in India with that in the U.S.

The most acute instance of wholesale racialization is seen with those who are found outside the ken of "Hindu society," the tribal peoples of modern India. When the British relinquished their colonies in South Asia, the interim government "acquired" by sheer force all the tribal kingdoms to the east of Bengal that were scattered across the hills and valleys of the region, much to their disdain. This disdain was natural as the Indian government's stated position was that sovereignty for smaller states was irrelevant in the new world order with mammoths like China (and, we should add, India itself) lurking around. In fact, the then Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel went so far as to say:

The people inhabiting these portions have no established loyalty or devotion to India. Even Darjeeling and Kalimpong areas are not free from pro-Mongoloid prejudices. During the last three years, we have not been able to make any appreciable approaches to the Nagas and other hill tribes in Assam. European missionaries and other visitors had been in touch with them, but their influence was in no way friendly to India or Indians. In Sikkim, there was political ferment some time ago. It is quite possible that discontent is smoldering there...

We must have a clear idea of what we wish to achieve and also of the methods by which we should achieve it. Any faltering or lack of decisiveness in formulating our objectives or in pursuing our policies to attain those objectives is bound to weaken us and increase the threats which are so evident. (Letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, November 7, 1950)

Soon after, this translated into official military policy with the introduction of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) 1958, which left civil law inapplicable in areas declared to fall under its jurisdiction, and thus left the armed forces a free hand in raping, arson, torture, kidnapping and arbitrary killing. Today, as many people from the Northeast move to metropolitan cities like Delhi and Bangalore, they face racialized and sexualized violence on a daily basis, based on their phenotypical features, "dressing-sense" or even myths regarding their lifestyles.

As evident every once in a while, this violence leads to public beatings and even killings of people from Northeastern parts, while police stations across cities refuse to entertain cases they file alleging sexual or physical assault. The first impulse of the police usually is to "reconcile" the victim with their racist perpetrators (that is, telling the victim not file a complaint against hate-crime).

OF LATE, there has come to be a visible population of African nationals in India, come here for employment and educational opportunities predominantly. They are on the receiving end of the most xenophobic and racist sentiments that arise from deep-seated notions of Brahminical skin-caste-purity compounded by colonially fostered anti-black prejudice. In Delhi itself, there have been two large-scale attacks on African Nationals, one of which was a raid by the Law Minister of Delhi under the racist assumption that all Africans are either drug-dealers or sex-workers.

Tribal persons in the Indian "mainland" have been living on the margins of state societies in forests and hills for a long time. That is why they were one of the first to come under attack from the colonial state in its project of establishing "law and order." This enterprise has been taken over by the government of India today, especially after it realized the mineral resources under tribal territories.

They have deployed the armed forces and the law in similar fashion as they did in the Northeast, but there have been large-scale displacements of people in this case, to facilitate the expansion of capital. In response, various tribal groups have taken up armed struggles against the state, right from the colonists' times to the present day. The civil society expression of this large-scale state-sponsored racism was reflected in former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's remark, "Naxalism remains the biggest internal security challenge facing our country," justifying militarization of these parts and the displacement of people that followed to those who read newspapers or follow the news.

In 2001, Dalit activists appealed to the World Conference against Racism to bring to global notice the continuing practice of caste discrimination. The connection was recognized long ago, as B.R. Ambedkar put in his letter to W.E.B. Dubois in 1946, "There is so much similarity between the position of the untouchables in India and the negroes in America that the study of the latter is not only natural but also necessary."

The nature of casteism in India can be summarized as upper-caste attempts to co-opt the voice of the oppressed castes in the garb of "Hindu" or "national" identity, and violent retribution in response to oppressed caste attempts to take control of their lives. Almost all affirmative action for their uplift is constantly under ideological and infrastructural attack from upper-caste leadership, both state and civil-society. The state itself uses the few who have managed to benefit from affirmative action as symbols of the "progress" made in overcoming caste, but the vast majority of oppressed Dalits work in the most degrading jobs and face social ghettoization.

Similar ghettoization is seen among the majority of the Muslim population of India. Though Islamophobia in India has a long history, Muslims face renewed discrimination in the face of the rise of Hindu nationalism in present years, culminating in the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, held responsible, among other things, for complicity in the massacre of Muslims in the 2002 Gujarat genocide.

On the ground level, the Sachar Committee on the condition of Muslims notes that 21 percent of those awaiting trial in criminal cases are Muslims, despite forming only about 14 percent of the population. Similar statistics hold for their presence in the prison populations, and symmetrical is their lack of representation in the police force and bureaucracy.

LIKE IN the U.S., racism in India arises, historically, out of the internalization of the colonist's vision of "subject populations," combined with the inability of the state that replaced the colonizer's to sever itself from the realities of colonialism. On the contrary, the new political class sought to build more and more on the political economy left behind by the colonizer to further its own wealth and clout. In India, this meant not only the perpetuation (and in some cases creation) of systemic prejudices based on race or religion, but also the wholesale revitalizing of the caste system.

As U.S. hegemony crumbles, the forceful arm of the USA operates not just domestically in incidents such as Ferguson, but also through the police of its allied states in an effort to retain the semblance of authority. The last time we saw this was during the Indian state's shameless silence--even ideological connivance--in Israel's offensive on Gaza earlier this year.

We salute the resilience of those who came out and the spirit of international solidarity which we find ourselves enriched from. We will strive to forge ever-greater unity in our global struggle for collective liberation.

Inquilaab Zindabaad! We are unstoppable!! Another world is possible!!