I went out and bought Sea of Poppies. Thanks for the introduction and for the great interview. Your world-view, vision, breadth of understandIng, your probing wit are needed now more than ever. You have helped to bring about this brighter day!!! I am happy to have access to your interviews, comments etc. and to be a part of this public discourse. You will ever be missed on TV and radio. Those of us who have followed your career do so appreciate your provocative and penetrating approach to issues current and historical and are thrilled to find you again. GLAD THAT YOU ARE ON THE PLANET!!!

Barbara

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081222&fname=Amitav&sid=1&pn=1

The talk is adapted from a session in Cairo last March. It moves me!

Chris Lydon

Amitav Ghosh wrote an op-ed for the NYT the other day on the tragedy in Mumbai last week:

India’s 9/11? Not Exactly

Todays editorial in the NY Times is a prime example:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/opinion/04thu1.html?hp

The closest they come to describing a falling empire is the phrase, which they attribute to other commentators: “dreaded multipolarity”

And don’t worry, the Gray Lady assures us all:
“A relative decline in power also does not mean that the United States will not remain powerful.”

“Relative,” what a word! I love that word…the word is so…well, it’s just so, relative!

Although that doesn’t mean I will be “reigning in expectations.” Just the opposite, indeed.

“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood-it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”

-MLK 1967
http://www.africanamericans.com/MLKjrBeyondVietnam.htm

The current economic crisis was some 35 years in the making with both parties and all presidents since Nixon complicit in the policies (or lack thereof) that allowed the private sector to obscenely profit from selling “magic beans” to investors and reap large bonuses and commissions by abrogating their fiduciary responsibilities.

Globalization (read – exploitation of cheap labor to benefit executives and stockholders at the expense of local workers) has exacerbated the crisis and will continue to unless it is stemmed as PE Obama proposes to do by making it less profitable to ship jobs overseas.

The financial tsunami that is sweeping the world is an empirical example of the interconnectedness and interdependency of all things and is an opportunity for great change if it is recognized and exploited (in the ideal sense) to affect peace and brotherhood. A President Obama can’t do it without willing participants to work for the commonweal; he is an idea man and a persuasive rhetorician who just may be the catalyst for an ideal “new deal” in which we all have a role. He knows the nature of what is required, exemplified when he said: “We are the change we seek!”

We need a critical mass of us to want and work toward the ideal; it is we who must alter our beliefs about ourselves and the world to realize the change, Obama is merely a mirror for our best selves to create the world we desire.

Peace and happy Thanksgiving to ALL,

Jazzman

Probably like Ghosh and many other “outsiders”, who will watch the speech, I have a more nuanced understanding of the US presidency. Even if Obama is an exceptional person, he is restrained both by the complexity of the world and by the structural rigidity of the office.

Sorry for this analogy, but if he is an agent of change, he must be the type of parasite that pretends to be local (thus the appointment of so many old-guard, neo-liberal Clinton democrats) and once in the system he kills the host. The ruling elite would never let this happen and they would find a cure for his virus. Otherwise, he is just the kind of parasite that lives in a symbiotic relationship with the host, in which case nothing much happens and the imperial, greedy nation keeps over-feeding itself, but maybe at a less frantic pace than in the past 40 years.

It is not that I don’t have hope, but it will only be realized if the young, and all the groups who supported Obama take to the streets and force him to carry out his promise. Was the election campaign only a pop-culture, feel good moment for the US or can the Obama fever spread to be the kind of viral grass-roots movement that brings about actual transformation? In the election Obama gave the people his greatest gift. He showed them that their voice can be heard. It’s in that which I place my tempered hope, not Obama the president.

I recommend Ghosh’s two pieces from 2002 and 2003 that I linked above.

We elect a president to make judgments as best he can about where to put the next foot forward. The Bush presidency has put many of us in despair for 8 long years. We have muted the TV every time he appeared in recent years.

There is way too much wrong to be righted or attended to as quickly as Nother seems to want from one man. This opinion is what I fear. Such an attitude multiplied and amplified will exert a big drag on Obama and we will ultimately be shooting ourselves really if we bury him with impatient demands judgments and criticisms. If he is really the treasure of a leader that we seek and we want to nurture we must also be kind in our demands and have some patience.

Best wishes for a great holiday.

hello Sidewalker- will get to Japan one of these days soon I hope!

The average American, for example, consumes around twenty times more meat and fish and sixty times more paper, gasoline, and diesel than the average Indian.

United States accounted for 4.6 percent of the world’s population and 33 percent of global consumption

The Outstanding Public Debt as of 26 Nov 2008 at 05:30:54 PM GMT is:
$ 1 0 , 6 6 1 , 3 1 7 , 3 5 6 , 5 2 1 . 5 6

The estimated population of the United States is 305,165,626
so each citizen’s share of this debt is $34,936.17.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$3.89 billion per day since September 28, 2007!

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/236

Ok, Potter I guess your right, I’ll let him get sworn in first. But I do disagree that inaugurals come and go…especially not in a time of crisis. Just read those two above. And in Lincoln’s first he gave us the phrase “better angles of our nature.”

If you think about it, this will be the most watched speech in real-time ever in the history of the world. Imagine that, the whole freak’n world, billions of human beings, will watch Obama’s speech together (as a union of the world) with hope in their hearts. I got my popcorn pop’n already!

By the way, since you are talking about sacrifice, you might be interested in the 2008 Massey lectures by the novelist Margret Atwood on Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth.

Here is a description from the HP:
“Payback is not about practical debt management or high finance. Rather, it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies.”
(http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey.html)

Great show and so refreshing to hear someone talk about the dearth of discourse in the US. First there was the legacy of McCarthyism, that pushed academia away from critical theory towards the safety of quantitative methods, and now on top of that it’s neo-nationalism.

It was interesting to listen to the discussion of imperialism, comparing Britain in the 19th century and the US today. But I kept thinking that there was a long history of US imperialism that went unmentioned here and is part of US historical myopia.

This occurs because coloured people have long been represented as unsophistocated, uncivilized and without history. Of course there was Vietnam, Korea and Japan, then further back the Philippines, Cuba, Hawaii and the US mainland, itself, from 1607 to 1890. What was western expansion if not colonialism?

Ronald Wright in his book “What is America?: A Short History of the New World Order” discusses the colonial practice and attitude, that conquering spirit that is at the heart of US mythology. He notes that George Washington called the the US a rising empire in 1783 and that JFK stated that “our frontiers today are on every continent…”

Of course some Americans have an uncomfortable relationship with the imperial foundations and the frequent excesses of their nation, as they do with the legacy of slavery, so the question, as Ghosh notes, is why so many were silent when Bush and the congress sanctioned the occupation of Iraq. I wonder if the safe turn from critical theory to quantitative methods in academia after McCarthyism isn’t an important factor.

Now the pressing concern is with the looming possibility of high unemployment. A redistributive swing back to a stronger welfare state and a fairer income distribution would be the obvious solution. But I wonder if the ruling class will decide to hold on to their wealth and instead seek to avoid social disorder by employing the poor in the next imperial pursuit.

Nother- we just elected, not only in my opinion, an extraordinary person to be President. He is not even “The President” yet. He did not go on vacation after a grueling two year campaign. He is already hitting the ground running and making some excellent appointments, giving press conferences and addresses. His plate is overflowing with problems that require immediate and wise decisions. There are limits to what he can do and his influence. Again- he is not even President but yet he has shown the kind of leadership we have been missing.

We do not need a Daddy. I don ‘t want a daddy figure. Inaugural speeches come and go. Obama’s speeches ( pretty damn good) came and went. One of the lessons of history still unlearned is that we need all citizens to act like grown-ups and as responsible partners in the common good as opposed to being told what to do or trying to get away with selfish acts b/c no one is watching or punishing.

I agree we should have government sponsored programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, Works Progress( Projects) Administration.

To see how far our country has gone astray in national security matters, one only need compare the Bush attitude towards the UN vs. JFK’s attitude outlined in this part of his ohh so beautiful first inaugural address:

“To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support—to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective—to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak—and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.”

-JFK January 20, 1961
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html

(HAPPY THANKSGIVING, OPEN SORCERERS!)

Man I love that…just like your dad would say: “Hey, life is tough, but you are stronger than that, so snap out of it and stop feeling sorry for yourself…now get up.”

But it’s the following part of the speech that really goads me. In a good way because it’s SO cogent, but in a bad way because it reminds me that we didn’t learn the lesson:

“Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.”

-FDR March 4, 1933
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/

obamma is the mamma

————————

Just dropping by to link two good pieces by Amitav Ghosh. Both are on empire and written just prior and at the time of our invasion. The impress still as wisdom:

From “The Nation” May 2002

Imperial Temptation”

From “The New Yorker” April 2003

The Anglophone Empire

Regarding the mention, or more specifically, the absence of mention of “sacrifice“, I believe you were referring to the statement President-elect Obama made at his press conference in Chicago announcing his economic team? If I am mistaken concerning the speech you reference in your comment, please forgive me.

In referring to the stimulus package needed to “jolt” the economy, and specifically in reference to how the stimulus package would be paid for, Obama remarked that it would require “scouring” the federal budget “line by line” and making “meaningful cuts and scarifies as well.”

I point this out only to underscore the point (I believe) you were making in your comment, that sacrifice will be required to rectify our current economic environment. It is my sense that Obama is attuned to this reality.

Wow the schism between Mr. Ghosh’s take on his own book during this interview and the take of the reviewers was very telling indeed.

Personally, my own memory of hearing “empire”: I remember the mantra during the 80’s that there were two superpowers in the world. Then of course during the 90’s I heard over and over that there was only one superpower. I suppose superpower was our humble way of saying empire.

Now interestingly enough, I have not heard that word “superpower” in sometime. It has simply vanished from the lexicon. Which speaks to Chris’s point.

Now all we hear is crickets. For instance, I listened to Obama’s speech today and I was dismayed that I did not hear the word sacrifice even once. Where was the call to arms, in the face of that empire crumbling? His rhetoric still struck me as: don’t worry we will get things back to the way they were.

I have to admit, that kind of talk is gives me the chills. Isn’t the true lesson of this mess that we (as a country) have been living far beyond our means? That’s what we need to hear from our President, and we need to hear it soon. He only has this “honeymoon” period to ask us what we –not he- will do for our country.

This country is like the most popular kid in highschool whose parents lost their job and can’t bankroll his car and fancy clothes anymore…only the kid won’t dare think about arriving at school without the goods, so he fakes it through simple denial and maxed out credit cards.

When is Barack Obama gonna have the nerve to tell us all that we’re going to have to take the bus to school from now on?

But I do have to admit that it’s precisely my interest in, and engagement with, your treatment of the actual historical period (and my own biases against the British Raj) that made me focus completely on that time, oblivious of the parallels with the US “empire” of today. So I’m grateful to Chris — an old friend — for pointing those out, though i would mildly demur with his suggestion that missing your Iraq analogies suggests I can’t read….!

Shashi

Dear Chris

‘Sea of Poppies’ is about many different things, and every reader responds to different aspects of it. As far as I am concerned this is wholly welcome. And I’m both glad and grateful to Shashi and Kanishk for reviewing the book: they know a lot more about the context than most, so it was wonderful to know of their response.

Your reading of the book was very valuable too, so many thanks for these comments.

All best

Amitav

Seventy times seven liberals attempted to latch their area of specialty onto these invasions. Feminism, Anti-racism etc all found a little seat on the tank. Bush was happy to encourage it.

The liberal intelligencia was into empire too, because they like telling people what to do.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jun/08/fiction1

I think Enkeri is right about a reluctance to use the term “empire” with comfort.

As for the absence of the term “Empire,” specifically. Your conversation with Ghosh made prominent a type of ambivalent attitude, in the US, toward the term “empire” itself. Outside of the US, the term “empire” (or “imperialism”) is commonly used to not only describe the United States of America but to connect the US to historical empires, from Ancient Rome to France and Britain.
A personal favourite is Denys Arcand’s Decline of the American Empire movie. The film wasn’t specifically about the US, but it was released (in 1984) at a time when the reference was quite obvious to many unwilling victims of the Cold War.