Re: RAJA RAMANNA PASSES ON

justlike_at_olddad.com
Date: 09/25/04 

Date: 25 Sep 2004 18:01:08 GMT

   Postcolonial fantasies about the bomb
   by Sudhir Chella Rajan
   "Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my
   mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white." Franz Fanon, 'Black
   Skin, White Masks'.
   Twenty four years after India's "peaceful" nuclear explosion came a
   series of blasts to trigger global nuclear "disarmament." But one
   "scientific achievement" was too quickly replicated by another, and
   most
   annoyingly so by a sibling nation which was quite obviously
   "borrowing"
   the technology from another, less repressible neighbour.
   The fallout was that the fervent euphoria among the middle classes of
   India was tempered somewhat by the first seeds of doubt that perhaps
   the
   BJP government had set in motion events that common folk would no
   longer
   be able to comprehend, let alone control. But that initial sense of
   defiance among the vast majority of the elites in both India and
   Pakistan endures, unfailingly fed by pundit hawks in newspapers and
   television who, with quiet dignity, inform citizens of both countries
   that their standing in the world has indeed improved after the blasts.
   Still, for the small minority of dissenters, the popular enthusiasm
   for
   South Asian nuclearisation is both profoundly despairing and puzzling.
   Their sense of bewilderment is understandable. First, neither country
   has faced any recent "security" threat as such, notwithstanding a
   carefully orchestrated campaign in various national newspapers about
   such imaginary things. Witness, for instance, the China card that was
   crudely played by the Indian Defence Minister only in preparation for
   the tests. The only real securtiy concerns are the tiring and mundane
   ones relating to food, social and economic security, apart from the
   growing sense of insecurity among minorities and women in the face of
   fundamentalist and patriarchal violence.
   Second, and despite all pretensions to the contrary, neither India nor
   Pakistan is more powerful in the arena of global politics today than
   it
   was before the explosions. The Cold War, the only significant threat
   of
   major global conflict which sharply divided the world into two, is now
   clearly over. Today's politics by other means, to paraphrase
   Clausewitz,
   is no longer war or even deterrence but trade sanctions, and these
   even
   the giants in the subcontinent do not have the clout to exercise
   meaningfully.
   So why do Indians, in particular, across the diaspora seem so elated
   about the latest explosions? A recent statement by the physicist
   behind
   Pokhran I, Raja Ramanna, provides some clues. He is reported to have
   said that while "Indians were treated as a subhuman species during
   colonial days", India has now finally "declared its greatness" with
   all
   the other 'haves' after detonating nuclear devices. Thus, a most
   inconvenient and embarrassing explanation for the popular euphoria
   appears to be located in the social psychology of colonialism and its
   aftermath.
   As the quote from Franz Fanon at the beginning of this essay
   indicates,
   the person of colour from the former colonies often wants nothing more
   than to grow up to be just like his erstwhile coloniser. Fanon, a
   French-Caribbean psychologist arguing within the psychoanalytic
   paradigm
   of his time, goes on to say that this obsession takes the form of
   sexual
   fantasy, and typically as a male fantasy of virility demonstrated to
   the
   European. It is therefore no accident, in this reading, that the
   intrepid Bal Thackerey should claim that the explosions proved that
   "we
   are not eunuchs." Since the eunuch cannot command sexual mastery over
   others, his very identity is in question. But to "possess" nuclear
   weapons is to consume like the white man, to come nearest to being
   white
   and thereby declare the nation's greatness.
   To the West, persons of Indian origin are renowned for their endless
   chatter about their nation and culture. To most of us, it is simply
   the
   expression of our national pride, a form of discourse about ourselves
   in
   which an assortment of ideas, people and achievements relates to the
   distinct identity of Indianness that is not quite South Asian. This is
   the planetary chain that unites V.S. Naipaul, Kalpana Chawla and
   possibly Salman Rushdie to the diaspora, but not Hanif Qureshi,
   Michael
   Ondaatje and the Dalai Lama. It is a reassuring tale about our distant
   origins and our recently acquired territory, but is always told with a
   sideways glance at the North American or European as if to say, "pay
   attention to us, we are interesting and we are a nation with borders
   and
   pride." We cannot avoid that yearning for approval, nor can we stop
   translating our speech endlessly into a conversation that they can
   understand and admire. Look, we are building supercomputers and
   sending
   satellites into space! Watch as we explode nuclear bombs! (But please
   stop reminding us of the depths of poverty and the heights of
   corruption
   we live amidst, the enduring problems of caste, gender and class
   relations or the relentless degradation of our environment)
   Alas, to the disappointment of the postcolonial citizen, admiring
   Western narratives of her nation remain few and far between. And even
   when the acknowledgements arrive, they continue to have patronising
   and
   demeaning overtones. What could be more disturbing than an editorial
   in
   the New York Times that terms the explosions an "arrogant challenge"
   to
   international efforts at arms reduction and in the same breath refers
   to
   India's "crushing poverty"? Or the permanent members of the Security
   Council dismissing out of hand India's claim to now be a member of the
   nuclear power states?
   What needs to be recognised in all this is that nationalism as a
   fetish
   is still yet another colonial legacy. What constitutes our distinct
   identity as a people is the largely accidental contiguity of our
   individual habitats and our shared but diverse cultural institutions,
   not the redeployed symbols of a mythical past. What gives us strength
   is our democratic polity that can effect meaningful social and
   economic
   change, not the achievements of a techno-military establishment whose
   very purpose is becoming obsolete. And what ultimately matters is our
   ability to bootstrap ourselves out of our myriad problems, including
   our
   destructive preoccupation with a definite national identity, not the
   occasional round of applause we purchase or the fear we attempt to
   induce in our former colonisers and their peers. To set our priorities
   right is therefore that very uphill task which the Kenyan writer Ngugi
   Wa Thiong'o called decolonising the mind.

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