Pre-1947 British propaganda poster
(picture found here …)
October 1st, 2005
The
era of wars without frontiers seems to be getting even more bizarre.
The fact that the successive administrations of George W. Bush have
stirred back to dominance recessive colonialist genes is a given. But,
stranger mutations are taking place, too. It must be all the uranium
dust that is flying around the globe; thanks to all the hundreds upon
hundreds of tonnage of uranium-enriched munitions piercing Iraqi and
Afghan life so perniciously that manufacturers are busting inventories
and the U.S. is in need of importing munitions from Israel.
We
are referring to the decision made by the Indian government, led by
Prime Minister Singh of the Congress Party, to vote for the US-backed
European-written edict to 'refer’ the Iranian regime to the Security
Council for not complying fully enough with the extortionist policies
of the Western imperialists. This move by the Indian government has
been domestically criticized heavily by both the Communists and the
Left, as well as by the right wing, Hindu-oriented Bharathiya Janath
Party (BJP).
From Colony to a Colonialist-wannabe? Is that what is happening? Or, is it a mere case of bribery?
Of
course, the Indian government, deploying the mandated Double-Speak
learned very quickly, would have you believe that they voted 'Yes’ for
the resolution, bearing in mind the best interests of Iran! Why, you’d
never know what extremities those crazy Yanks and the Euros would get
up to had it not been for the moderating influence of India. The Indian
government’s decision, we would be told, most definitely had nothing to
do with galactic-sized bribes such as a special backstage pass for the
Nuclear Club, and promises of a likely OK for India’s bid to be seated
at the UN Security Council permanently!
Oh, the gall! The
gall, and now the sharing in the European-generated racist assumptions
that the peoples of the Third World are such stupid idiots that they
cannot see the deceit and the outright treachery against them taking
place in broad daylight!!
Praful Bidwai, commenting on the
'objections’ the Indian government brought up against the original
draft of the resolution, and the supposed concessions that India
allegedly extracted from the Europeans and the US, has written, "'These
objections pertain to the very substance of the motion and warranted at
least abstention from, if not opposition to, the vote,’ says Hamid
Ansari, India’s former ambassador to Iran and a West Asia expert, who
has closely followed the IAEA’s debate on Iran. Yet, India went along
with the "yes" vote on the plea that it had persuaded the EU-3 to
modify its original tough resolution," (Inter Press Service, on Anti-War.com, September 28, 2005).
This
is an outright lie, as explained by Bidwai, since, "India’s decision to
vote with the U.S. was taken even before Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh’s visit in mid-September to France and the U.S., where he met
President George W. Bush. The Hindu newspaper disclosed on Sept. 17 that New Delhi had already decided to vote in that manner if it came to the crunch."
India’s relations with Iran have had
their historical twists. A former Shah of Iran, Nader Shah (also
written as Nadir Shah), who apparently was not a very nice man, some
long time ago, in 1738 AD, invaded and occupied India for some months,
plundered it thoroughly and massacred many thousands of Indians very
horribly, and brought back with him the Peacock Throne, the very symbol
of the Iranian monarchy. According to the Wikipedia entry for this gentle soul,
"The plunder seized from India was so rich that Nadir [Shah] stopped
taxation in Iran for a period of three years, following his triumphant
return." George W. Bush, top that!
Pakistan being a British
colonial invention, back then we were neighbors with India, and one
could say that Nader Shah’s rude behavior constituted the first episode
of not-good-neighborly behavior on our part.
Fast forward to
some time later, when the British were India’s colonial overlords, and
using her resources to the maximum. Taxes collected in India paid off
British debts to the Dutch bankers, and naturally the slave labor
provided by the Indian workers and soldiers made the running of the
empire that much more bearable for the British.
The town
where some of us were born in was one of the places, where Indian
manpower was used in the service of Her Majesty the Queen, the
Sovereign of all lands where night was supposedly never seen.
The
city of Abadan is in the southwest corner of Iran, at the northwest
extremity of Persian Gulf. The town has a unique history and its oil
workers have played a pivotal role in labor unrests that have proved
crucial in key political battles in Iran. The city lies just on the
border with Iraq, in the province of Khuzestan, where most of the oil
in Iran rests, and one of the first places where the British
penetrated.
Abadan is a microcosm. Its history, down to its
architecture is tightly woven with oil and colonial designs. The city
has two distinct sections: the 'Old’ section and the 'Oil Co.’ part.
The old part is the remnants of what the Abbasid dynasty built and
developed into a successful port city in the 8th century AD. In the
early years of the 20th century, the old section was a peaceful,
idyllic fishing and date-farming village, free from modern history’s
turbulence and violent currents.
The Oil Co. part of the
city is a classic company town built by the British, between 1909 and
1913, thus securing themselves a steady supply of fuel that would stoke
the fires of World War I. The centerpiece of this company town was,
naturally, the oil refinery. In later years, a petrochemical plant was
added, a mere hundred meters from a school I attended. The refinery
boasted being the third largest facility in the world pumping out black
gold; and black fumes in proportion to shipped barrels per day.
The
British efficiency was evident all right. The refinery was
geographically in the middle, and all the residential areas were so
built as to make the workers’ trip to work possible in the shortest
amount of time; workers of each section would live closest to the gate
that led to their work section. The refinery was expansive and
therefore never too far off as we went shopping, went to school, to
hospitals and clinics when sick, as we played, went to sports clubs, or
to social clubs. All of which schools, clubs, hospitals and clinics,
and sports facilities followed closely the British liking for
everything class-based; management had its own, engineers had their
own, and workers of different ranks all had their own separate
facilities.
To get back to the Indian connection, there was
a neighborhood, in one section of the Oil Co. part of the city, which
was called "Sikh Lane." We did not know or suspect, when growing up,
but later as young adults we were told that the so-named neighborhood,
at one point, used to house Indian technicians and soldiers (presumably
mostly Sikhs, hence the name of the neighborhood?), whom the British
colonialists had brought to carry out the technical duties and protect
them against us the local savages. The very older Iranian generations
still alive, may even remember the days when Iranian locals were not
allowed to enter certain neighborhoods in the Oil Co. part of Abadan;
which neighborhoods were exclusive to the British managerial and
diplomatic classes, or other visiting Europeans who may have been
invited to behold the British bluster and swagger.
Fast
forward to nowadays. Back in June 2003, it was reported that the US was
asking India to send more than 17,000 troops to participate in the
sacking of Iraq (see, Washington presses India to send troops to Iraq, World Socialist Web Site,
June 30, 2003). At the time, this would have been more than what the
British were sending to Iraq, and would have put the number of Indian
troops second only to the US’s.
Back then, Prime Minister
Atal Behari Vajpayee, of the right wing Hindu chauvinist BJP, who was
and is very friendly with the Bushes, did not give in to the US
pressure, and was in fact forced to reflect the popular sentiment of
the Indian people in declaring the military invasion of Iraq as lacking
justification.
So, this time around, obviously the size of the
bribes offered by the US and the Europeans must have been pretty
substantial. Substantial enough to do two things. First, to offset
possible economic retaliation by Iran by scrapping any lucrative gas or
other deals. And, to offset the real revulsion of the party base and
the consequent loss of real political power for the party of Gandhi;
the party that led the Indian nation to liberation from colonialism,
the party that co-organized the Bandung Conference, and co-founded the
Non-Aligned Movement, thus giving the Third World an
institutionally-based independent political voice.
And this
makes us shudder. So, what is the next step for India? Are we indeed
facing a new machinery of colonization and plunder whose gears will be
oiled mostly by the blood of the colonized subjects; again? Only this
time the colonized subjects step forward voluntarily to serve the
master?
And it also makes some of us shudder for we wonder:
will Indian soldiers be assigned to locations in Iran and the Middle
East? Would Indian ruling classes be fooled into thinking they will
re-write their past by sending their boys to occupy again those
abandoned housing units in Abadan’s Sikh Lane, only this time not as
slave technicians and soldiers but as volunteered paid mercenaries
sacrificed to the Gods of neo-liberal imperialism?
These are
very sad days indeed for India. We can only hope that this move by
their government to openly side with the imperialists will make it even
clearer what path the Indian ruling classes are taking, and to see a
re-awakening of the outrage of the Indian people and the working
classes whose standards of living, down to their very water, is being
sold off to private, profit-seeking companies.
Let us work
for a re-awakened voice of the Third World, the South, the neo-slaves
of this new world order. And let it be told that in this new world
order, the South is not a geographical designation any more, but a
designation of power. New Orleans is the proof of that.
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