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Too Soon and Too Late? A Review of “Fast Track to Troubling Times”

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“Fast Track” is an evaluation of Narendra Modi’s first 100 days as the hard right Hindu prime minister of India.  Timed to roughly coincide with Narendra Modi’s coming visit to the United States, “Fast Track to Troubling Times: 100 Days of Narendra Modi” was released this past week.  It comes after the election was concluded, but, the obvious objection holds, before enough time has passed to judge the government.

Thankfully, we can dispense with the idea that this government is starting from a blank slate.  Each sections has a subsection that links current developments to relevant aspects of Modi’s record as Chief Minister, lending the report more weight than an analysis of 100 days would offer by itself.

Among Modi lowlights described in the report are a loosening of several rules around land acquisition for industrial projects that will hurt socially and economically disempowered groups, the use of anti-Muslim propaganda in UP for election campaigns, and heavyhanded pressure against members of the media to refrain from criticizing Modi or others. There are many others described in the report.

“Fast Track” is  fairly comprehensive in terms of subjects, covering theModi government’s actions on “culture”, “development”, “economic policy”, “the Environment”, “women [and] sexual minorities”, “human rights”, and “religious minorities,Dalits, andAdivasis.”  The  independent sections are heavily sourced through links, making it potentially a more convenient read with a web browser than on paper.  This design unfortunately takes away from a sense of linear narrative and there is some amount of repetition in order to allow each section to stand alone effectively. In general, the writing could be stronger; as it is, the report makes for a better reference text than a read.

“Fast Track” unfortunately does not have a separate labor section, but it does cover extensively the relationship between the state and the private sector, issues of social discrimination that are completely tied up with economic well being, and the question of development.  Those interested in South Asia and its laborers will find useful information in this report.

The document is attributed to Ghadar Alliance, which describes itself as “an emerging coalition of  Indian diasporic groups across the United States consisting of various social justice organizations active in the country for several decades.” (Ghadar Party was the name of a revolutionary nationalist movement in the Indian diaspora in the U.S. and Canada in the early 20th century.)

Report back from Government of Bangladesh meeting with US Congresspeople

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SALW received a report back from a lobbying meeting of representatives of the Government of Bangladesh with United States Congress members.  The meeting was held Tuesday and covered labor issues in Bangladesh’s garment sector.  Apparently, no members of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Export Association (BGMEA) were there, contrary to what had previously been indicated.

In attendance were reps from the Bangladeshi American Democratic Caucus (BADC), the Bangladesh Medical Association of North America (BMANA), the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), the United States Department of Labor, the International Trade Council of the U.S. House of Representatives, The United States Trade Representative, staff from the office of U.S. Representative George Miller, and U.S. Senator Carl Levin.

The Bangladeshi government argued that progress to improve labor conditions in Bangladesh’s garment export industry was unprecedented.  Using a presentation from the BGMEA, the government argued that an increase in costs to production could be passed along to workers.  It requested that U.S. government officials visit Bangladesh in 2014 to meet with the BGMEA.

Senator Levin indicated that safety conditions had improved and some progress had been made on the implementation of laws for minimum wage, but that the Government of Bangladesh and the BGMEA were not taking worker organizing rights seriously enough.  He said that he had met with Bangladesh Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed when the latter had visited, and that despite the meeting, Ahmed had punished worker representatives upon return to Bangladesh.  Levin pointed out that because many families and workers are dependent on the income from garment work, the workers were made vulnerable.  He said that he recognized that garment owners might not be accustomed to dealing with worker rights issues, but steps were necessary.

The Worker Rights Consortium representative said that he agreed that Bangladesh had made enormous economic progress in the garment sector to have become the 2nd largest producer of ready-made garments in the world, but that it’s important to remember that brands sourcing from Bangladesh, the Government of Bangladesh, and others have responsibilities.  He pointed to recent violence against a union leader and said that violence against worker representatives indicated a serious problem that must be addressed.

Referencing a claim in the presentation from the BGMEA, the representative from the Worker Rights Consortium said that one of the figures was incorrect; contrary to the claim of the BGMEA that 21 factories had been shut down as a result of safety concerns, the WRC representative said that only 10 had been closed.  He acknowledged that this meant workers were left without work, but argued that the concern over safety ought to be paramount in such instances.  He also raised concerns that the BGMEA was not tolerating dissent from workers on important issues.

U.S. Congressperson George Miller’s staff member raised concerns that issues of repression against worker representatives were not being taken seriously enough and that the BGMEA and government were sending mixed messages with regard to a dispute at Pioneer.  He said they were acting contrary to the interests of workers by, for example, publicly arguing that it was against the interests of the state for workers speaking up about labor issues.

The representative of the Government of Bangladesh said that it was BGMEA, not the Government of Bangladesh, that had made that claim and that the Commerce Minister was not aware of what happened at Pioneer.

The Government of Bangladesh representative said that Bangladesh is a newer country that has only been independent for 43 years.  The rep asked for more time to resolve these issues.

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Bangladeshi government, garment owners, to lobby members of U.S. Congress on 7/15/14

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On Tuesday, representatives of both the Bangladeshi government and an industry body for garment manufacturers and exporters will be lobbying members of the U.S. Congress.   They will be looking to restore tariff benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences that have been suspended since last year by the Obama Administration.  The benefits were suspended by the U.S. government shortly after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building left over 1,100 Bangladeshi garment workers dead in a preventable factory disaster.

The Bangladeshi government and BGMEA will be meeting with several Democratic Congress members, including John Conyers, Sander Levin, Gary Peters, George Miller, and Mike Honda, and the staff members of others, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jerry Connolly, Sheila Jackson, and Keith Ellison.  The parties will be discussing progress on a set of demands that the U.S. government has made of the Bangladeshi garment sector and the Bangladeshi government to improve safety and foster unionization.

A hasty return to better trade terms between Bangladesh and one of its main customers, the United States, would remove a substantial source of pressure currently pushing garment owners and the Bangladeshi government to allow improved working conditions and unionization.  Such a step might also signal brands like Wal-Mart and Children’s Place that the U.S. government feels enough progress has been made to return to the status quo in trade terms when in fact much remains to be done on both building safety and worker rights in the Bangladeshi garment sector.

The meeting is being organized by a Bangladeshi diaspora group that seeks participation of the Bangladeshi community in the Democratic Party.  Members of the media have also been invited.

Review of “Hindu Nationalism in the United States”

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As noted earlier this week, South Asia Citizens Web is carrying a new report entitled “Hindu Nationalism in the United States” (pdf).   This report provides a 2014 snapshot of the sangh parivar‘s activities in the American diaspora.  Unfortunately, useful as it is, the document lacks a compelling narrative that runs through it.  It doesn’t tell a story; rather, it takes  a clinical approach to outline the organizational structure of the Hindu right in the Untied States.

“Hindu Nationalism in the United States” builds off of previous reports (pdfs) on the Hindu right in the United States.  The report looks at four categories of groups: Youth and Family Programs”; “Charitable Organizations”; “Academic and associated sites”; and “Sangh Leadership in Indo-American Communities”.  The report provides figures for the amount of money spent by groups over the past 15 years in each of the first three categories, coming to $2.5 million, $55 million, and $1.9 million respectively.

Youth and Family Programs” covers activities aimed at indoctrinating young people and generating a diasporic community that is broadly sympathetic to the sangh and includes groups like Hindu Students Council and Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHPA).  “Charitable funding” involves spending on service work in India and includes organizations like Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of USA and, again, the VHPA.  “Academic and associated sites” frequently involves the funding of university-level research in a Hinduized framework such as through the “Hindu University of America”.  “Public Campaigns” cover everything from the effort to sanitize California textbooks to fit Hindutva sensibilities to the work of Hindu American Foundation, which we have written about before.

Unfortunately, in reading the report, it is only infrequently that one feels like one is getting insight into what the sangh parivar is actually doing in the U.S. and what the impact of those actions are in South Asia and elsewhere.  In one instance, the report points out that Hindu right educational activities in the U.S. are different in nature than those in India in a number of ways such as not including knife and stick fighting.  As a result, says the report, “What remains…is that while attendees and their families may not be fully devoted to the Sangh’s supremacist politics, they ‘end up with a strong sympathy for the Sangh'”.  These hints at an anthropological or psychological approach toward the sangh and the diaspora are important and tantalize the reader, but ultimately, the report leaves them hanging.  In place of compelling storytelling, one gets lists and charts of organizations and little emphasis on what might appeal to a second generation reader.  There is very little that is sexy about the report.

Now one might argue that I am asking too much of this report, that it is not designed to be a novel, but a tool for analysis, and that my critique is predominantly of style.  However, given the report’s purpose, which is to combat sangh work, I would argue it needs to engage more directly with an audience that is in the diaspora- it is, after all, up to that diaspora whether to accept or reject the sangh’s work.   As a lengthy analysis of how people in the diaspora are being manipulated to support sangh politics in India, the report doesn’t give someone in the diaspora enough reasons to care enough to read it.  This is particularly the case since it is the third or fourth such lengthy analysis to be written in the past decade or so;  at some point, these sorts of document have got to be made compelling to an audience that doesn’t already agree with them.

There are other issues that could be raised with the report, but I will cut myself off here.  At the end of the day, we are better off for having access to “Hindu Nationalism in the United States”, but one wishes for a different kind of literature about the sangh and its activities in the global North than what we have been privy to over the past 15 years.

Red, White and Saffron

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A little birdy gave me a copy of the materials Hindu American Foundation is using to lobby U.S. Congresspeople.  Lobbying is a process involving visiting with policymakers that groups like corporations and non-profits use to push their agendas on the American government.  HAF is a ‘soft’ right Hindu nationalist organization that uses human rights rhetoric.  Critics argue that HAF is linked to militant Hindutva organizations in India such as the RSS by forming an arm of the sangh parivar, or, family, of groups.

As you will see in the materials, there are some surprises (jointly lobbying for religious worker visas with Council on American-Islamic Relations, among others) and some of the old, familiar Hindutva rhetoric (“India first faced Islamist violence, dating as far back as the 8th century, to the time of the Mughal invasions…”)

A quick and dirty assessment: the rhetoric is often fine and might work perfectly well to inform an American congressperson of, say, the most salient points of anti-minority violence in Bangladesh; at the same time, the materials are one of several ways that the slanted agenda and ideas the intellectual framework of virulent sangh organizations can make their way into American policymakers’ minds.   Why, after all, does one need to lobby U.S. Congresspeople on the alleged need for a uniform civil code in India or defend Narendra Modi against claims that he was involved in religious pogroms?  The answer is that one doesn’t need to.  So why is HAF doing it, if all it cares about are human rights of Hindus?

Bonus: a list of donors to the HAF is included on the last page of their newsletter, including someone with the same name as Obama appointee Sonal Shah, whose nomination was controversial in South Asian progressive circles exactly because of alleged ties to Hindu right organizations.

On second thought: a conversation about fascism and the 2014 Indian elections

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In the aftermath of the Indian elections, South Asia Labor Watch was one of many groups and individuals to be dismayed by the victory of Narendra Modi based upon an analysis that emphasizes the role of the RSS as the shock troops of prospective fascism.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss the issue with Shamik Sarkar, a Kolkata-based activist, who put things in a different light.  Sarkar argues that a true understanding of the idea of fascism in India has more to do with state-media-corporate collaboration than it does with the foot soldiers of Hindu nationalism.

As you’ll see, ‘fascism’ can have very different meanings to different people, and their analyses for the process for making change can differ alongside that.  On to an edited transcript of the conversation:

SALW:  Greetings, Shamik.  I’m very curious what you make of the elections.

SS:  For us, election is not a big thing, you know. Whoever comes to power, life of the working people in this country will remain same. Moreover, electing, and electing a ruler, and electing a powerful ruler in this election are agenda of powerful middleclass (almost 30 pc of total electorate/population) in our country. They always decide the election, as they swing to here and there. In most of the time they are fractured, thanks to their attachment with regional powers. In this election, in most of the states they overwhelmingly opted for a ‘strong’, ‘decisive’ ruler in the Center (barring a few, like TN, WB, Odisha, Punjab, Kerala). Their idea of being governed by a stick-yielding one, of being ruled by a strongman, of getting f**ked by a hot rod in the a** is indeed an indication of fascist mindset. Our electoral democracy and party system has every element of making this wish fulfilled. But I think their lust of self-repression will not get a go as a diverse country like us cannot be governed with iron hand, and BJP is wise enough to understand this. Rest of the people are least interested about electioneering apart from casting their votes, sometimes calculating immediate material gain out of it.

Thus, I am not in the chorus of Fighting Fascist Ruler, which in my opinion is more ideological than practical or real life. But we will surely fight the fascist tendencies of middle class and common working people, not only in their politics but in everyday life as well, and will watch the liquidation and reform of fascist ideology of RSS by their own man.

SALW: What do you think is the answer to the kind of class tyranny you describe and won’t conditions for organizing worsen under RSS-rule?

SS: We are in favour of organizing at grassroot level, with whatever popular issues are in hand. It is not wise to fight them face to face. Actually, for some years (2008 onwards when people’s movement against land acquisition subsided), face-to-face fight against any ruler has become almost impossible for common people. Perhaps since 2001. The State has turned into a fascist direction since the War on Terror has arrived. The RSS today is not more powerful than State-Corporate-Media, and thus people are under a systemic fascism and a little change would occur if RSS is made a little more powerful organisationally. Left in India is still visualizing RSS as the face of fascism and doesn’t see the actual structural fascism through state-corporate-media combination. That is pity.

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