The white man called you Bhagat Singh that day,
The black man calls you Naxalite today.
But everyone will call you the morning star tomorrow. (‘Final Journey: First Victory’ by Sri Sri.)
Dutta and Pal (in press) wrote that the subaltern sectors of the globe who are historically silenced and disconnected from mainstream public spheres, constitute rich markets and sources of intellectual property for TNCs. This is very true and is constantly reinforced as we examine the patent applications and the various resistances mounted by activist groups against patenting indigenous knowledge. Further, the subaltern population also occupies some of land with the richest resources in the southern countries; their land has rare medicinal plants, rare varieties of rice/ wheat, Bauxite, minerals, teak wood, Agar wood, African black wood etc...As a result, there is now the constant effort of TNCs (MNCs is an outdated term!!), to appropriate those resources and remove the subaltern population from their ancestral and other homes. One just has to look at documented forest depletion from Indonesia, African countries, Amazon rain forests, Myanmar etc.., the increasing patents on natural products derivatives, the plight of the diamond fields of Sierra Leone, the continuing situation in Bastar tribal belt of India and Orissa to take a few examples. Dutta and Pal further write that the subalterns are controlled through "the deployment of dialogic tools that increasingly use terms such as listening, empowerment, participation and development to perpetuate the economic exploitation of the subaltern classes in the global South." There is one more addition to this, the subalterns are also controlled by brute force, by violence.
The violent state mechanisms and violence perpetrated by the state security forces which is legitimized by the tropes circulated in mainstream media. The subalterns resist; they resist with violence, an act of resistance. And now the violent incidents are on the rise; both instances of subaltern resistance and also state reprisals. Satre in his preface to "The wretched of the Earth" writes that this irrepressible violence is neither sound and fury, nor the resurrection of savage instincts, nor even the effect of resentment: it is man re-creating himself. This is a very important statement. I question to myself that is it that the Indian subaltern tribal having been exploited across generations by imperialists, colonialists, the feudal society, the government and the upper class is now tasting freedom. Is it the same for the subaltern resisting elsewhere in the world. Have they rediscovered themselves? Satre goes on to say that no gentleness can efface the marks of violence; only violence itself can destroy them. "The native cures himself of colonial neurosis by thrusting out the settler through force of arms " (Fanon). We see similar sentiments echoed in Ho Chi Minh (1947) and Chairman Mao's (1939) statements reproduced on the "Marxist dot org " website. But the thing that strikes me is that most of the articulations are against the colonial, imperialist outsiders who occupied and enslaved the countries. The colonialists have been physically ousted. Now the oppression is within the countries from the feudal structure, the class structure, the caste structure, the mainstream on the margins and woven within it the neo-colonial, neo-liberal forces which enforce a new form of exploitation and slavery; the material realities of oppression remaining the same; the oppression meted out from your own countrymen (is the word "countrymen"/ "fellow citizen" a trope?). But the important point is we cannot proceed with the same resistive strategy with which we ousted the colonizers. This form of colonization is more pervasive, more embedded into the social structure and is clever in its manipulation. The degree of co-optation is much more greater here and there is no physical outsider which threatens the material existence of the majority of the southern society now. It is only the margins which are threatened and within them also the degree of co-optation is high as they too are unable to visualize the threat till it wipes them out.
As Dutta and Pal write that through the processes of participation, dialogue, development discourses and solidarity the subaltern voices and agency is co-opted and controlled; eventually silenced from the public sphere. But again that is the nature of the beast, the public sphere and the inherent politics. The knowledge system there works to silence and control and co-opt. Dutta & Pal further say that the subaltern studies project provides an entry point for creating a dialogic space but again I contend that it is also a political space, an alternative articulation and it also marginalizes, silences and mis-represents. At most, it offers the subaltern scholars and us researchers the limitless possibilities to carve our identities and indulge in the resultant politics. It helps us challenge the existing hegemonic knowledge systems and create our own.
However, I am filled with hope; inspite of this reflexive cynicism.
This BLOG posting is getting long and I would be raising Prof. Dutta's hackles further, so am ending with my favorite quote from Marquez which I believe in:-
"In spite of this, to oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life. Neither floods nor plagues, famines nor cataclysms, nor even the eternal wars of century upon century, have been able to subdue the persistent advantage of life over death. An advantage that grows and quickens: every year, there are seventy-four million more births than deaths, a sufficient number of new lives to multiply, each year, the population of New York sevenfold. Most of these births occur in the countries of least resources - including, of course, those of Latin America. Conversely, the most prosperous countries have succeeded in accumulating powers of destruction such as to annihilate, a hundred times over, not only all the human beings that have existed to this day, but also the totality of all living beings that have ever drawn breath on this planet of misfortune. Faced with this awesome reality that must have seemed a mere utopia through all of human time, we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.
"In spite of this, to oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life. Neither floods nor plagues, famines nor cataclysms, nor even the eternal wars of century upon century, have been able to subdue the persistent advantage of life over death. An advantage that grows and quickens: every year, there are seventy-four million more births than deaths, a sufficient number of new lives to multiply, each year, the population of New York sevenfold. Most of these births occur in the countries of least resources - including, of course, those of Latin America. Conversely, the most prosperous countries have succeeded in accumulating powers of destruction such as to annihilate, a hundred times over, not only all the human beings that have existed to this day, but also the totality of all living beings that have ever drawn breath on this planet of misfortune. Faced with this awesome reality that must have seemed a mere utopia through all of human time, we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.
Poets and inventors of tales believe in anything anyway...
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