Let Us Pray: Local & Geopolitical Reflections
Loading Map
Kolkata (Calcutta),
West Bengal,
India
Friday, November 23, 2007
OK. Some quick, down-and-dirty reflections on the political situation in West Bengal, and its potential local and geo-political consequences as I have been able to glean from my brief time in Kolkata and talking to a number of people who have lived here all their lives. As much as they lament the corrupt policies and brutal practices of the Communist Party here, they hope and pray that it retains power in the next election. "Even if it is taking us to the dogs, that is better than wholesale conflagration," said one man. Kolkata, and all of West Bengal, is like a volcano under which the pressures have been building for 30 years toward an eruption. The government has made a lot of enemies. It has a lot of blood on its hands. What has kept things stable at all, however miserable, is that the keys to the kingdom were held safely in the tight grip of a determined and brutal thief.
The Communists always took great care to meet in private, hash out their differences, and present a united front. No one had the slightest idea that there were fissures in the monolith. Nandrigam (see Entry 6) has changed all that. The deep splits in the party have been exposed. They are written about in the newspapers. They are acted and shouted about in street demonstrations and riots. They are costing far more lives than those killed in Nadrigam's demonstrations in March and October, as well as livelihoods and property, in West Bengal's villages.
The Communists have never won a majority in Kolkata. Their base has always been the rural villages, held securely in place by the façade of caring for the people and their welfare, while doing next to nothing to help them. That façade has been shattered by Nandrigam and its aftermath. The opposition is seizing the moment, fanning rural fears with the often repeated, whispered question sweeping through the farmlands, "If the Communists get re-elected, will it be your land that is taken away tomorrow?"
If the opposition does win, there will be a bloodbath set off by the various opposition parties' retributions against the Communists. What is going on in Nandrigam could be everywhere in Kolkata, in every village of West Bengal. The volcano will release its pent-up fury in wave after wave of an eye for an eye. "Kolkata may be hell, but it will become hellfire," said someone else.
For me personally, there is an even more ominous geopolitical dimension to this potential local carnage that no one else has mentioned. I see it on the periphery, like a waiting tiger waiting for the right moment to pounce.
Chinese troops have been conducting a massive buildup along the Tibetan border for months. They have dramatically increased their incursions into Indian territory, and recently flagrantly destroyed a Buddhist statue in Indian territory. (The Chinese hate India for giving refuge to the Dailai Lama, whom they despise. And it is not insignificant that India is a competitor with whom they would rather not have to share their economic dominance in the coming century. Throwing India into chaos would lessen China's competition for its marketshare.)
The Indian national government, always reticent to confront its mega-goliath neighbor, has made no response to the Chinese violations into its territory. All of which gives dangerously clear signals of its weakness and lack of political will to a government that understands all too well exactly what that means in The Art of War. The Indian national government has been further weakened by the recent, intense internal dissent over the US Anti-Nuclear Proliferation Agreement. So while Indian/US relations are weaker, and the US has castrated itself under our dumber-than-dumb, Neo-Con-puppet-President and his catastrophic Iraq war, China can only be emboldened to do whatever it wants to India if West Bengal begins to go up in flames.
Scary? Catastrophic Thinking? Maybe. Maybe not.
One thing is certain. The Chinese have not constructed a high speed train that runs 24/7 transporting troops to the Indian border for sport.
Whatever happens, the vulnerabilities offer a lesson in the inevitability of cause and effect. Nothing lasts forever, least of all power. Everything changes. We reap what we sow. And the innocent will likely suffer more than the guilty. With the Communists, the stranglehold they have exercised in power will ultimately prove their undoing, if not now, later. For the US, China would never contemplate a massive invasion of India if the U.S. had any real international muscle left. It is yet another object lesson in why no leader worth the title even considers a less than necessary pre-emptive war.
The whole geopolitical landscape will change forever if China invades India and the U.S. is powerless to stop it.
Let's forget our preconceptions and pray, like many of the good people of Kolkata, that for now, the Communist Party stays in power here. Let's pray that the next elected US President has the depth of intelligence and character, courage and profound political skill to see below the surface and to lead us wisely through the chaotic decades ahead, when we are all going to be facing some pretty harsh consequences of what we and others have done and have so foolhardily left undone.
Let us pray.
