Tharoor on The Mahatma

“Gandhi's life was, of course, his lesson. He was unique among the statesmen of the 20th century in his determination not just to live his beliefs, but to reject any separation between beliefs and actions. In his life, religion flowed into politics; his public persona meshed seamlessly with his private conduct...No dictionary imbues 'truth' with the depth of meaning Gandhi gave it. His truth emerged from his convictions; it meant not only what was accurate, but what was just and therefor right. Truth could not be obtained by 'untruthful' or unjust means, which included inflicting violence on one's opponent. For Gandhi, the way to truth was not by the inflicting of suffering on one's opponent, but on one's self. It was essential to willingly accept punishment in order to demonstrate the strength of one's convisions.”

-Shashi Tharoor


Tharoor describes Gandhism as “physical self-denial and discipline, spiritual faith, a belief in humanity and in the human capacity for selfless love, the self-reliance symbolized by the spinning wheel, religious ecumenism, idealistic internationalism, and a passionate commitment to human equality and social justice.....

truth alone triumphs

“How does one come to grips with a land of such bewildering contrasts? The world's largest democracy that is also home of the ageless caste system; a land steeped in superstition ad spirituality that is a world leader in information technology; the nation of Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of non-violence, that is convulsed by periodic bloodletting. The Paradoxes abound. The country's national motto, emblazoned on its government crest, is “Satyameva Jayate:” Truth Alone Triumphs. The question remains, however: whose truth?”

-Shashi Tharoor

india

walking down a dusty road, its initial curves masking any sense of ultimate destination.

i came across a simple stone carving; it read:

Hello Wanderer,

Don't Forget

Inner Stillness.

I walked on; down the same dusty road,

the peace palpable. A distant chatter of unknown tongues

in the green fields shadowing the shallow river,

four brilliant yellow and black butterflies,

dancing a mid-air dance,

hovering over the most supple pink of pinks,

illuminated in the afternoon sun, effervescent,

fleeting, staggering.

LRA

I have written extensively in the past about the human-rights catastrophe that the failure to apprehend Joseph Kony, terror of Central Africa, has been in the last decade. Kony, following his self-proclaimed divine mission to implement a magical kingdom based on the Ten Commandments, has ravaged, raped, pillared, and killed his way through vast swaths of the continent, at times aided in a defacto struggle by the Islamic-fundamentalist Khartoum government in its own human rights abuses against its Christian South and Christian neighbors in Uganda. The U.S. Government, which has lent logistical support to the Ugandan military in the past, seems to be stepping up its action plan against Kony, long a scourge of terrified rural populations (well documented in the media through such brilliant films as PBS's The Lords Children, which documented the large numbers of children abducted and forced into a life of butchery and bondage by Kony and his senior commanders). This man, and his “Lords Resistance Army” has been one of the worst non-state violators of human rights in the last decades; the word atrocity does not do justice to his particularly vehement brand of terror. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, “Since 2008, Kony's men have massacred some 2,300 civilians and abducted over 3,000 more in a remote area straddling the borders of the Congo, southern Sudan, and CAR. More than 400,000 villagers have fled their homes there. In 2010 alone, Kony's fighters have so far led more than 240 deadly attacks.”
According to an excellent new report by the Pulitzer Center Crisis Group, Obama's new strategy seeks to, “'apprehend or remove from the battlefield Joseph Kony and senior commanders' and to promote the defection of his remaining fighters, bolster civilian protection, and increase humanitarian support.” While commendable, this action has come much too late for the millions already displaced, and the tens of thousands already killed or directly affected by this maniacal warlord. Let us hope that this new hardened stance of the administration (no doubt influenced by the work of Samantha Power in her role as special adviser) pays dividends, quickly and efficiently, to the long-neglected people of Central Africa; let us also hope that the new Republican Congress does not continue the neglect of the past in its rush towards fiscal “austerity” and isolationism.

crisis.

“The way this crisis will be solved will effect the future of democratic elections in Africa.”

-Ivorian Official (unnamed, Time Magazine)

Africa's hope for a democratic future lies on the tightrope of West Africa, a region so fragile, that something so innocuous as a stolen election (innocious as a well-trodden path to the village well, in this part of the world) could shatter the fragile illusion, the delicate veneer, of stability that has quietly blanketed the most volatile of political regions for the last 5 years. The list of regional tragedies is long; Sierra Leone; Liberia; Guinea; the lives disrupted, the countless flows of refugees across the man made borders, the collectively tortured consciousness of waves upon waves of landless refugee, forcibly migrating at the whims of brutal military dictatorships and even more brutal rebel armies.

While democracy and democratic elections are certainly not a collective fix all for the regions ills, the freedom of democratic voice, the pluralistic opening of societies so long under the strong arm of repressive governments, represents a strong, positive current in the struggle for human rights and the struggle for human decency that must be guaranteed to all citizens of this world. And while democratic elections are focused on the bloodless transfer of power, they have often simply rolled out the red carpet for brutal military uprisings and prolonged power struggles.

The troubling aspects of the current scenario playing out in Cote D'Voire are two-fold; the first being the fact that this was once the crown jewel in the Francophone West African Empire; a shining example of post-colonial development, now reduced to ashes by ethnic and tribal divisions and a protracted civil war, due to be settled by this very democratic process, which has instead exacerbated the widening rifts. The second aspect is that in a region so fragile, the struggle threatens to draw in fighters and ethnic sympathies of neighbors, threatening a regional-destabilization in the process. Rampant unemployment and slow reconstructions in previously war-ravaged Liberia and Sierra Leone will not help this process.

African political leaders have not shied away from heavy reliance on ethnic sympathies when fanning the flames of conflict. The case of Cote D'Voire is no different. The leadership curse of Africa must be vanquished once and for all.