Neoliberalism

Flash back to the first time you met another Desi lefty. Can you remember the quickening of your heart? Your excitement at finding someone who cared about the same issues and communities? For most of us, the moment we realized we weren’t alone in the world, struggling against the conservative expectations of our parents, aunties and uncles - when we realized that we had sisters and brothers in the cause who understand where we come from and where we wanted this world to go - was life-changing. 

Over one weekend in August 2015, three South Asian American youth camps took place across the US: Bay Area Solidarity Summer (BASS) in Oakland, CA, Chicago Desi Youth Rising (CDYR) in Chicago, IL and East Coast Solidarity Summer (ECSS) in New York City, NY. In an effort to collaborate long-distance, camp organizers asked the youth participants to collectively define three key concepts at the beginning and end of their camp expereinces. Below is a summary along with reflections on the camp experience.

How can an event be at once ordinary and extraordinary, simultaneously decisive and indecisive?  The victory of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Indian parliamentary elections of 2014 is indeed a watershed moment; for the first time in the history of independent India, it will be ruled exclusively by a Hindu supremacist party. And yet, a careful look at the way the Modi/BJP campaign produced this victory yields a picture that can only be characterized as simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary, decisive and indecisive.

In 2006 and 2007, I spent several months in Ahmedabad while on a fellowship from my university in the US. During my time in Ahmedabad, I interacted with the mostly-Hindu NGO staff where I was based, residents of the largely Hindu shantytown where the NGO was working, and professors at Gujarat University. Less than five years had passed since the city had gone through its nightmare: vicious riots involving saffron-clad men entering urban neighborhoods and brutalizing, gang-raping, and burning other human beings. Some 1,500 Muslims were killed.

Categories and names are often misleading, even for those of us who are often wary of the dominant rhetoric. As much as we want to escape it, dominant discourse is only there to shape our ideas and reactions, as is the case of the rhetoric surrounding 9/11; of good and evil, of war, liberation, and of spreading democracy.   Here, we write to challenge these slogans and policies hoping that one day they will go away.

Looking through the alphabet soup of financial instruments such as Collateralized Debt Obligations, Asset Backed Commercial Papers, Credit Debt Swaps, are you feeling like a commoner back in the day, disallowed from reading holy verses in the sacred language, while being made to feel like a sinner for questioning the high order? Ali Mir explains the collapse and considers the Obama victory and the next Act in the struggle.

As the smoke lifts from Mumbai, skepticism must prevail over thoseconjectures which support the official state narrative. It is crucial toincrease the pressure for transparency and accountability at this moment toensure that India doesn't slide into the same state as post-9/11 USA.

The deaths continue even as I write this. The death toll stands at 195. And of the several hundred injured some may not survive. It is now official. The siege is over. The last of the gunmen inside the Taj Hotel has been shot dead.