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THE term carpetbagger applied to any American northerner who went to the south after the Civil War and became active in Republican politics, especially so as to profit from the unsettled social and political conditions of the area during its reconstruction. The term today describes any opportunistic or exploitive outsider who meddles in politics or internecine wars abroad to steal local business or resources.
Of course carpetbaggers often cite a higher cause to offer their help. Lord Macaulay rationalised colonial plunder in cultural terms, as something of a proselytising mission by England to civilise Indians. The American mission in Afghanistan and Iraq reeks of a similar missionary zeal. If they had to “civilise” anyone, there were enough mediaeval monarchies sitting on oil resources to start with. They were dictatorial like Saddam Husain and they are mediaeval like the Taliban, qualities the West finds provocative enough to wade into any country these days.
It is commonplace of course that the Americans were eyeing oil and not any grandiose mission, so they toppled the Gulf`s first elected government in Iran. They cultivated military dictators and mediaeval rulers from Latin America to Asia in the name of liberty and the free world.
They bred religious fundamentalism as a foil to communism, their favourite bugbear. In South Asia they wove Hindu and Muslim radicals among other religious extremists round their little finger. When he was asked about the need to hatch barbaric guerrillas in Zia ul Haq`s hatcheries to subvert a secular government in Kabul, Jimmy Carter`s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzenziski famously proclaimed that it was more important for the Soviet Union to fall than to worry about a “few stirred up Muslims”. So there you are - a few stirred up Muslims. On the other hand, Hindu bigots, masquerading as Indian patriots, have leaned heavily on their acceptability in western countries. Their main source of funding derives from there.
Throughout the eight years of Bush presidency there was not a squeak out of the White House or the State Department over rightwing bigotry of Hindutva in India. US Ambassador Robert Blackwill kept his mouth sealed on anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice falsely told Congress that the legal machinery in India was robust and the killers of Gujarat were being pursued. Finally, it was India`s Supreme Court that had to transfer the cases out of Gujarat to secure a few crumbs of justice for the poor and harassed minorities. The Clintons visited Gujarat to help raise funds for earthquake victims there but no word was ever heard from the couple about religious bigotry stalking the state. But it`s payback time. Muslim Osama, Sikh Bhindrawale, Hindu Sadhvi Pratigya - name them - they inevitably recoil on their mentors.
If Hillary Clinton does become secretary of state will she bring a new perspective, a secular approach to end religious fanaticism that seems to be so firmly entrenched in South Asia? She has to understand that bigotry has little to do with one religion`s hostility towards another. Take out Muslims from a social bouquet and give them a separate space Pakistan, Central Asia, Bangladesh, Kashmir, Palestine they will soon be lunging at each other`s throats, with generous applause from the global carpetbaggers. Give Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians - who all look mild mannered otherwise - their spaces and, as you have discovered, they would soon split into mutually antagonistic groups not averse to bloodletting. The Hindus, so known only since recent centuries - as opposed to 5,000 years of full-blown Brahmanism have rarely taken respite from mutual and deep-rooted hostilities within their fold. In the earthquake zone of Gujarat the upper caste Patels would not share their relief camps with lesser Hindu brethren, forget their hostility with Muslims.
It is this mélange of complex challenges that some of the writers and friends I respect have been grappling with. Two of these friends from Pakistan have taken opposite sides in the search for a secular and equitable solution vis a vis the so-called Taliban menace. One supports anybody, including rabidly religious groups, prepared to fight American imperialism. The other cautions that groups like the Taliban have no qualms in burning girls` schools and inflicting barbaric sentences in a strange lottery they run by divine virtuosity. The stark fact is, I am told that many men in Kabul have started growing their beards in anticipation of the return of the Taliban there.
The argument that the war on the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan is somehow being fought between barbarism and modernity, in which the US-led alliance offers the best bet to stave off Talibanisation of the region does not seem convincing to me, not the least because of the double-standards used in defining barbarism. In India, hundreds of thousands of girls are slaughtered in the womb every year. Is this barbaric enough to merit foreign intervention. There is any number of recorded bride burning and honour killings across the democratic republic each year. Is this barbaric? Every day you meet children, both girls and boys, begging on the streets, performing acrobatics for a living, within stone`s throw from the UN offices in Delhi, including the World Bank and Unicef. What could be more ironical? Where are the promised schools for them right in the heart of the Indian metropolis?
So how come we don`t expect foreign intervention to resolve the malaise of our own mediaevalism in India? And who among the foreign powers would be motivated enough to deliver it, when everybody, like good carpetbaggers, is willing to cut deals with religious bigotry elsewhere, including most of all in Israel? If there is a solution to the Taliban menace it could only be fought by a secular democratic mobilisation, without any spurious help from foreigners.
Every day brings India closer to Hindutva fascism by half a screw-turn if not more rapidly. Should we call in the international police? Did Bush help? Would Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? There`s a great mission on in the intractable border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan to eliminate polio. Granted that Taliban are an obstacle. But a similar situation exists in the heartland of democratic and secular India. Muslims primarily, but other groups too in Uttar Pradesh, fear polio vaccine the same way as the Taliban do and organisations like Unicef are having a hard time to persuade them to relent.
So the question still remains if it is better to fight the Taliban first by aligning with the West, or to campaign with the Taliban to eject western forces from Afghanistan (and why not Iraq too?) and then wage the real battle to bring equitable and secular democracy to our region. In other words, take on the Taliban next. Many of my friends think that such an idyllic possibility obtains more readily in India vis a vis Hindutva. That is a myth. Carpetbaggers can clean you out in a robust-looking secular democracy such as ours. They succeed often by keeping the social equilibrium poised to dump the façade of democracy, and with it secularism itself.
