What
You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter
Special Investigation: Why Did the
World Trade Towers Fall?
A scientific explanation
at last, from a physicist and mechanical engineer. P. Sainath recalls
Gandhi's 9/11, one hundred years ago; Chris Sands reports from Afghanistan on the rise
of the Taliban.What you just missed, but can still get, in our
last newsletter: Paul Craig Roberts on the Collapse of America. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers
each month! But
remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the
print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription
to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find
anywhere else, or by making a donation towards the cost of this
online edition.
Remember contributions are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
"When Government undertakes
a repressive policy, the innocent are not safe. Men like me would
not be considered innocent. The innocent then is he who forswears
politics, who takes no part in the public movements of the times,
who retires into his house, mumbles his prayers, pays his taxes,
and salaams all the government officials all round. The man who
interferes in politics, the man who goes about collecting money
for any public purpose, the man who addresses a public meeting,
then becomes a suspect. I am always on the borderland and I,
therefore, for personal reasons, if for nothing else, undertake
to say that the possession, in the hands of the Executive, of
powers of this drastic nature will not hurt only the wicked.
It will hurt the good as well as the bad, and there will be such
a lowering of public spirit, there will be such a lowering of
the political tone in the country, that all your talk of responsible
government will be mere mockery ...
"Much better that a few
rascals should walk abroad than that the honest man should be
obliged for fear of the law of the land to remain shut up in
his house, to refrain from the activities which it is in his
nature to indulge in, to abstain from all political and public
work merely because there is a dreadful law in the land."
--Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri,
speaking in the Imperial Legislative Council, at the introduction
of the Rowlatt Bill, Feb 7, 1919
It was bad enough, when the bill doing
away with habeas corpus and adherence to the Geneva Conventions
was being discussed this week, that its supporters actually said
that only those who had done wrong need worry. It is further
testament to our standard of political discourse that the rebuttal
was often equally pathetic -- we can't trust this president to
exercise good judgement! Few statesman in today's debate can
capture the issue as succinctly as did Rt. Hon. Sastri nearly
a century ago.
All of this is moot, in another sense. This is just one more
slide, albeit a huge one, in a long list of slippages our people
and politicians have allowed over the last decade, always with
the exhortation to 'put it behind us'.
We set out to make Iraq in America's image. We have succeeded
splendidly in achieving a certain mutual resemblance. Today there
is no difference between disappearing in Iraq and disappearing
in America. In one place you might be held incognito by a militia,
in the other by the government. Until yesterday, the difference
was that in America, the governent was obliged to produce you
before a magistrate, to let you have a lawyer, to allow your
family to know.
The mobs in the middle east may raise a million cries of, "Death
to America", but it is George W. Bush and his pocket Congress
that are carrying out their wishes.
'Na Vakeel, Na Daleel, Na Appeal', was the slogan raised by Indians
against the imposition of the Rowlatt Act in 1919. Translation
"No lawyer, No Trial, No Appeal".
"The Rowlatt Act
was passed in 1919, indefinitely extending wartime "emergency
meaures" in order to control public unrest and root out
conspiracy. This act effectively authorised the government to
imprison without trial, any person suspected of terrorism living
in the Raj." (From Wikipedia)
There was anger in India --
and shock. Whatever one's dislike of British rule, it had the
perceived merit of standing fast by notions such as open trials,
prisoner's rights, appeals, due process, impressive in a country
which had mainly known princely whim for justice in earlier times.
The Rowlatt Act tore the veil of moral superiority from the public
face of British rule.
Indian opposition to the Act, voiced by many well-meaning and
eloquent legislators such as Sastri, was ignored. Public outrage
was widespread, but unfocused. Gandhi was then a relatively fresh
face in India, having returned from South Africa less than four
years before. His exploits in South Africa and more recently
in Bihar had won him fair renown, but he was by no means yet
pre-eminent.
Though on unfamilar political
terrain and younger than many other leaders in a country where
age equated to deference, Gandhi had two attributes that set
him apart from most other leaders --daring and faith. Only he
could have had the nerve to call for a general strike throughout
India, as he did. Only he could have grasped that a draconian
law was an insult to the country, and that to not counter it
in the fullest measure was to betray an article of faith. He
was in Madras, at the home of his host Rajagopalachari
(later to be the first Indian Governor General), when, as he
writes in his autobiography, "The idea came last night
in a dream that we should call upon the country to observe a
general hartal (strike)". On April 6, without any formal
organization, in an era without phones, photocopiers, or computers,
word spread, and the entire country came to a standstill!
If Gandhi found a law permitting
detention without trail by a foreign government abhorrent enough
to launch a nationwide general strike, what is America doing
when similar laws are being passed by its own government?
Answer: Not even a filibuster.
Are there political leaders holding town hall meetings (electronic
and otherwise) telling the people what this draconian legislation
means? They are far too busy trying to dodge the accusation of
being 'soft on terror'. As in 2002, this will not save them.
Tony Snow warned today that their statements of doubt during
the debate can and will be used against them in the campaign
(proof that Miranda at least still lives, after a fashion). They
are, in Sastri's words, "Toadies, Timid Men".
Following the hartal, in Punjab
(where the Lt. Governor would shortly impose indignities such
as a crawling lane where Indians could not walk, but only crawl),
people assembled in a park in Amritsar on Baisakhi Day (the Punjabi
New Year) on April 13, 1919, to protest the arrest of two activists.
Known to history as Jallianwalla Bagh, the garden was enclosed
all around by a wall. Gen. Reginald Dyer, head of the army in
Punjab, said he wanted to provide Indians a "moral lesson",
and had his troops fire into the enclosed space, resulting in
the death of 379 people (by official count).
The rest (no pun intended)
is history. After the Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh, the English
lost any moral hold they had over the minds of Indians. The Great
Hartal also signified the beginning of the Gandhi Era. Within
thirty years, the Empire was finished. As a booklet on Jallianwalla
Bagh says, "If at Plassey the foundations of the British
Empire were laid, at Amritsar they were broken".
In our times, having already
disdained the law and being caught out by the Supreme Court,
our Emperors are trying to rewrite the statute retroactively,
assisted by a conscience-free Congress. That a reportedly sick
man hiding in a cave in Waziristan has brought about the abolition
of habeas corpus in America is the clearest verdict on who is
winning the War on Terror.
In India, in 1976, Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi passed a similar law, abolishing habeas corpus
and setting herself unpunishable for any crimes committed before
or during her office (it was repealed, lock stock and barrel,
when a new government came to power). But before she could do
so, the entire opposition had been arrested, the press had censorship
clamped on it, and the jails filled with a hundred thousand dissenters
picked up in midnight sweeps. India's parliament does not have
a filibuster. The Democrats and Republicans who sold the country
down the river have no similar defense, other than to say it
has become a habit.
Where is the Martin Luther King today to call for civil disobedience?
Where are the crowds outside the White House and Congress? The
fight is no longer against the Bush administration or its minions
in the other estates. Their Empire is headed for the abyss. The
question, is, will it take the Republic along?
Gandhi wrote in his Satyagraha
in South Africa (whose 100th
Anniverary fell on 9-11-2006!), that people came to him saying,
"We are ready to follow you to the gallows". He replied,
"Jail is enough for me." If the Republic is to be saved,
those who love it must ask themselves what they are ready to
give up in return. As for the rest, Samuel Adams (yes, the beer
guy) had this answer:
"If ye love wealth better
than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating
contest of freedom, " go from us in peace. We ask not your
counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget
that ye were our countrymen!"
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.