The Price of Inviting Invasion

The British Indian army occupied Iraq during World War I. Being die-hard colonialists and imperialists the British officers posted in Iraq thought that the Iraqis were like the passive Indians and could be lorded over the way the Indians were being ruled. So, they began to govern Iraq in a high-handed manner.
But soon they discovered to their dismay that the Iraqis were a bit different as they revolted against the oppressive British rule in 1920. What the British chronicles refer to as a revolt is known to the Iraqis as the Revolution of 1920. Indeed it was a revolution in that all sections of the Iraqi society from Baghdad to Basra had risen in rebellion demanding the British to leave their country. Although wounded badly in World War I, Britain was still strong enough to punish the “rebellious” Iraqis; indeed they dealt with them in the most brutal manner. The Royal Air Force, and there was hardly any thing royal about it, showered bombs and poisonous gases on unarmed Iraqis and defeated them into surrender and silence, the silence of death and destruction.
But the nationwide Iraqi revolt succeeded to the extent that it forced the British to review their policies. They decided in the Cairo Conference of 1921 to abandon the Government of India mentality and direct rule and replace it with indirect one in which pliable Iraqis, who willing to cooperate, will also be included. But it was difficult to find pliable and ‘trust worthy’ men in Iraq whose nationwide rebellion was just suppressed and bombed out. They then spotted Faysal, the son of Husayn, the Sherif of Makkah and Britain’s favourite Arab leader of the Arab Revolt fame who was then languishing in obscurity after the French had outsted him from France at gun point in 1920. He was weak and pliable and fitted well in the British scheme. He did not have any base in Iraq and, therefore, would always be dependent on the British support to survive in office. And such men surely perform what their masters order them to do. So, Faysal was installed as king of Iraq. For appearance sake a referendum was held in which Faysal secured more than 97% votes. This happened because the election was blatantly and widely rigged in favour of Faysal. So the first lesson of democracy that the Iraqis learnt from the British was how to rig elections to ensure one’s victory. When years later Saddam Husayn did exactly what his country had learnt from the British, the later along with the entire West condemned his brand of democracy as fraud and dictatorship.
To help Faysal serve the British interests well, his imperialist mentors gave him a cabinet which had only pliable ministers with British advisers whose advices were binding. Moreover, defence and foreign affairs were completely in British hands, even internal security was under their control. But despite their suffocating control over the country, the British shamelessly declared Iraq as independent. For their part the “Arab rulers of independent Iraq”, too, were very intelligent. They knew they had no base of support in the country which felt threatened by resurgent Turkey as well as by the Kurds who felt a loose Turkish rule was preferable to the suffocating British imperialism backed by the menacing Royal Air Force. But Faysal’s Iraq, which then had only the Ottoman provinces of Baghdad and Basra, needed the Kurd-dominated and “possibly” oil-rich Musal badly to be a viable state. They knew well that only Britain’s military and diplomatic support could secure Musal for them, a sort of helplessness that always compelled them to cooperate with the British willingly and without conditions. The drama staged in Iraq during the 1930s is being played again in that unfortunate country with the only difference that the actors in this first decade of the 21st century are Americans with the British in supporting role. The story line, too, more or less, is similar to the old one. The Americans occupied Iraq on false grounds in 2003. Thereafter they found amenable Iraqis, within and outside Iraq, who are willingly cooperating with them. They held elections in the occupied country, ignored its boycott by large numbers of people and proudly declared to have created a new democratic independent Iraq. The Iraqi collaborators of the Americans, too, have the temerity to call their country independent despite the presence of over 150 thousand American forces there. They also take pride in describing themselves as democrats as democracy has historically been in their blood. Today Americans have total control over the Iraqi oil, and they decide where huge oil revenues have to be spent. On their part the pliable Iraqis, like their counterparts of 1920s and 1930s, have enough intelligence to understand the value of American support without which they would not survive even a day in office. In the given circumstances these puppets have no option but to cooperate with the U.S. But the Americans do not have trust and faith in them. So, they want a treaty which would allow them to permanently keep their forces in the country with freedom to kill Iraqis without facing trial. It is to be seen what the so called new “independent and democratic Iraqi rulers” would do; they seem to have been caught between the devil and the deep sea. They had invited this American invasion and occupation of their country, and now they have to pay the price.

[June, 2008]

They Are in Maharashtra Also

He was about 25 and his younger brother might have been 20 year old. There was a young woman with two children. Their mother, about 55, was also with them. They were wandering in the Muslim locality of Jamia Nagar in Delhi, worried and begging. They were penniless and needed money to go home which they were begging/requesting every by-passer to donate.
This family had come to Delhi from Akola in Maharashtra. Anil, the father of the two children, said that poverty had forced his family to come to Delhi looking for better prospects. Some contractor, as he said, had promised to get them jobs but deserted them when they landed in Delhi. They had no one else to look to and began begging.
Anil looked blank when asked if he regretted that his decision to leave Akola for Delhi, with his entire family including two children below five, was utterly foolish. He had no answer and no idea about what the future held for them; he was desperate to return to Akola.
Such life-stories are common, perhaps, in every part of India. It is not only the people from Bihar and eastern U.P. who migrate to Mumbai and other mega cities to make a living but they also happen to be in Maharashtra, poor and compelled to move to Delhi or elsewhere for earning their livelihood. One wonders if Mr. Raj Thawkeray is aware of the fact that there exists a poor population in Maharashtra also which finds Delhi economically more attractive than Mumbai. And an Anil, whose story has been narrated above, creates the very kinds of problems for Delhites which North Indians have allegedly done to Mumbaikars. Anil with his five family members can not afford but to live in slums or squattter on roads. Being semi-educated, they would hardly find decent jobs to sustain them economically. Like their North Indian “cousins” in Mumbai or Kolkata their life seems to be condemned to poverty and deprivation.
Poverty is a problem everywhere. But it is a tragedy in India. Here poverty is not merely economic deprivation which keeps one under-nourished or even hungry. Poverty or living below the poverty line means that you can not send your children to a decent school ensuring an equally dark future for them. In India it is the deadly combination of economic and intellectual poverty that compounds the problems of the poor and keeps them mired in the vicious vortex of deprivation, privation and marginalisation.
It is said that 65 per cent Indians are literate today. We do not have a definite definition of literacy but surely it can not be called an enabling education. The whole emphasis is on making people literate which is just good in the sense that something is better than nothing. All will agree that being just literate is not enough ; instead we need an enabling education.
The fortunate among us, men and women with degrees in higher education, specially the ones who received their early education in private public schools, can not fathom the depth of deprivation in rural and tribal India. There are schools which exist only on papers in Government offices. And the ones which exist in form and structure hardly have an academic atmosphere. The teachers are poorly paid, and in some states salary payment is utterly irregular. This compels teachers to look for other avenues of resource-earning than just focus on imparting “quality-education” to their wards. One fails to understand why primary school teachers are paid poorly in India. If this state of affairs continues unabated, we would surely blacken the future of India.
The parents, whose wards go to primary schools in rural and tribal areas, are not just poor but they are also educationally backward. They do not have a mind that can look beyond their immediate needs. The result is that they do not create an educationally congenial atmosphere in their surrounding and thus their wards suffer at home as well.
A fresh and revolutionary thinking is required. Government and private endeavours for improving the educational conditions across the country are welcome. However, what we need the most at the moment is social and educational awakening. We need reformers and an army of social workers to accomplish this national mission, and this alone is the sure way to eliminate the plight of Anils scattered all over the country. This should indeed become a national agenda.
[May 2008]