The government of the US has no moral authority to elect itself as the judge over human rights in Cuba, where there has not been a single case of disappearance, torture or extra-judicial execution since 1959, and where despite the economic blockade, there are levels of health, education and culture that are internationally recognised.
British political activist, writer, and historian (born 1943)
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Fractures in the state, divisions in the ruling class and indecision on the part of the intermediate classes pave the way for dual power, which, in Russia, led to the creation of new institutions and later, in China, Vietnam, and Cuba, rested on revolutionary armies with varying class compositions that were locked in battle against their respective state machines.
Mukherjee's account makes absolutely clear that, in order to protect the (British) Raj from a Japanese threat that never materialized, the British state sacrificed the lives of some 5 million people. The war cabinet maintained an attitude of callous indifference. In Churchill's case, the indifference was strongly tinged with racism.
MEANWHILE THE ISLAMISTS, while far removed from state power, are busy picking up supporters. The persistent and ruthless missionaries of Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) are especially effective. ... The Tablighis stress their nonviolence and insist they are merely broadcasting the true faith to help people find the correct path in life. This may be so, but it is clear that some younger male recruits, bored with all the dogma, ceremonies, and ritual, are more interested in getting their hands on a Kalashnikov. Many commentators believe that the Tablighi missionary camps are fertile recruiting grounds for armed groups active on the western frontier and in Kashmir.
I wrote and spoke and appealed for support, but the West remained silent. Nixon had ordered Kissinger (or perhaps it was the other way round) to 'tilt towards Pakistan'. Beijing tilted in the same direction. As the war raged, millions of refugees were provided with temporary accommodation in the Indian province of West Bengal. Finally, the Indian army crossed the border and defeated its Pakistani counterparts.
This single event had alienated me totally from the 'new' Pakistan. In the past one had fought against the elite, but this time a large section of the population was infected with an ugly chauvinism. It was not the Baluch or the Pashtuns as much as the Punjab and, to a certain extent. Sind. The failure of the Punjabis to protest against the crimes being committed in their name made them complicit. Some were no doubt frightened, but how could they be when they had only recently moved mountains, defied fear, toppled a dictatorship? It was something else. It was Bhutto. Having followed him during the movement, voted for him, they could not betray him. They assumed he must be right and so remained silent. It was then that I made my ow-n personal decision to stay away from them. The blood of Bengal separated us. Pakistan has yet to acknowledge these crimes and apologise to the people of Bangladesh. For its own sake, not only for theirs. Official histories in Pakistan continue to lie. They write of how India had decided to break up Pakistan. Not true. It was the Pakistan army backed by the bureaucracy and the majority People's Party led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who took the risk and lost. They did not succeed in implanting 'pure Muslim genes' via the 'pure Muslim sperm' of the Punjabi soldiery.
Growing up in a newly independent country should have provided at least a tiny bit of inspiration, excitement or stimulation. Pakistan, alas, was a state without a history. Its ideologues, on the few occasions when they were coherent, could only think in terms of comparing and counterposing everything, big or small, to neighbouring India. Pakistan’s rulers suffered from a gigantic inferiority complex. This created problems on many levels, but for those of us at school in the fifties it created a terrible vacuum. Nationalism in Pakistan did not mean keeping a self-respecting distance from the former colonial power, but crude anti-Indian chauvinism. It was not totally illogical. The Congress in India had waged a two-pronged struggle against British imperialism. The Muslim League had been created by the British to organize the Muslim gentry. Even in the years prior to 1947, the Muslim League had essentially fought, not the British, but the Congress. In secret, I admired Nehru, but to have said so publicly would have led to too many fist-fights at school.
BOOKS HAVE A DESTINY. THIS IS MY THIRD STUDY OF PAKISTAN. The first, Pakistan: Military Rule or People’s Power?, was written in 1969 and predicted the breakup of the state. It was banned in Pakistan. Critics of every persuasion, even those who liked the book, thought it was going too far in suggesting that the state could disintegrate, but a few years later that is exactly what happened. Just over a decade later I wrote Can Pakistan Survive? The question mark was not unimportant but nonetheless struck a raw nerve in General Zia’s Pakistan, where to even pose the question was unacceptable. The general himself was extremely angry about its publication, as were sections of the bureaucracy, willing instruments of every despotism. Zia attacked both me and the book at a press conference in India, which was helpful and much appreciated by the publisher's sales department. That book too was banned, but to my delight was shamelessly pirated in many editions in Pakistan. They don’t ban books anymore, or at least not recently, which is a relief and a small step forward.
[On funders of the Black Dwarf newspaper] The other one was an armed-struggle potter, a woman called Fiona Armour-Brown, who lived in Wales. She was slightly over the top. She believed we should be setting up small terrorist groups – that wasn't the word used, but that's effectively what it was – in Wales and parts of Northern England, to challenge Labour. So we laughed her out of that one. But, again, she would send a cheque for a hundred quid, occasionally more – I think she'd inherited family money, too. Once when she came to the office I asked her why she was giving us this money. She said: "Politics – it’s the best paper around – but there’s also a personal thing involved."
"What’s that?" She said: "Once, I was standing by a cliff-edge on the French Riviera – I was very unhappy, don't ask why – when a guy rolled up on a motorbike, with a leather jacket, stopped, looked sternly at me and said: 'You’re not thinking of committing suicide, are you?' And I was so stunned I said: 'Well, that is what I was about to do.' He said, 'Don’t be silly! Come on, get on the back of my motorbike – I don’t have a spare helmet – and I’ll take you to the nearest town, and we'll sit down and get rid of this nonsense in your head.' That was Christopher Logue. 'So,' she said, 'I owe Christopher my life, and when I saw that he was also one of the founding editors of your magazine ...' I checked with Christopher, who said: 'Thank God I did it.'"
In Dhaka, Mujibur Rahman waited at home to be arrested. Many of his colleagues went underground. The military shelled Dhaka University. Artillery units flattened working-class districts; trade-union and newspaper offices were burned to the ground. Soldiers invaded the women’s hostel on the university campus, raping and killing many residents. With the help of the intelligence agencies and local collaborators, mainly Islamist activists, lists of nationalist and Communist intellectuals had been prepared (as in Indonesia in 1965), and they were now picked up and killed. Some had been close friends of mine. I was both sad and angry. I had predicted this tragedy, while hoping it might be avoided. Immediately after the December 1970 general election I wrote, "Will the Pakistan Army and the capitalist barons of West Pakistan allow these demands to go through? The answer is quite clearly no. What will probably happen is that in the short-term Mujibur Rehman will be allowed to increase East Pakistan’s percentage of import and export licenses and will be allocated a larger share of foreign capital investment. These are the 'concessions' which the Army will be prepared to make in the coming few months. If Rehman accepts them, he will be allowed to stay in power. If not, it will be back to business as usual in the shape of the Army. Of course there is no doubt that in the event of another military coup there will be no holding back the immense grievances of Bengal and the desire for an independent Bengal will increase a hundredfold."
"The Pashtun tribesmen under Khurshid Anwar`s command halted after reaching Baramula, only an hour`s bus ride from Srinagar and refused to go any further. Here they embarked on a three-day binge, looting houses assaulting Muslims and Hindus alike, raping men and women and stealing money from Kashmir treasury. The local cinema was transformed into a rape centre. A group of Pashtuns invaded St Joseph's convent, where they raped and killed four nuns, including the mother superior and shot dead a European couple sheltering there. News of the atrocities spread, turning a large numbers of Kashmiris against their would be liberators. When they finally reached Srinagar, the Pashtuns were so intent on pillaging the shops and bazaars that they overlooked the airport, already occupied by the Sikhs".
The assassination of the Austrian crown prince by a Serbian nationalist was the trigger for the conflict, not the underlying cause, comparable in modern times to the explosions of 9/11 that provided the pretext for the war on Iraq, the destruction of Libya, Syria and the Yemen and the total destabilisation of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The post 9/11 wars have lasted longer than the First and Second Wars put together.