The year 2016 ended almost on the same note as the beginning of 2017. However, there is a big difference.
Last year ended with the bad, bad, bad hangover of Donald Trump taking over as US President. As a journalist and academic reporting on the American polls from Boston and New York, I could sense that almost half of the nation, especially the cities of New York, Boston, San Francisco, among others, went into a depression. A closed, alienated, mechanised and isolated society, as America is, the puffed up eyes and tears were hidden from the world, even as university students in Boston sought psychiatric care, professors took special mass counselling classes, and immigrants, foreigners, students and academics went into a traumatized shell. There were scattered protests across the big cities, especially by students, proclaiming, “Not our President”.
The fear of Ku Klux Klan became transparent on empty streets of distant suburbs, with racist and hate graffiti emerging on the walls. Women with hijab, including students and American citizens, faced the typical barb: “Go back to your country.” Anti-depressants and antianxiety pills became a hidden ritual. An MIT scholar in Boston told this reporter with absolute fear, “What if he triggers a nuclear war?”
His victory, days before Christmas and New Year last year in America, shocked and awed all those Americans who were earlier rooting for Democrats Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. A ‘socialist’, radical, anti-establishment and ageing Sanders was universally loved, especially by the young and the academia – the millennials – and Hillary was basically disliked, for the ‘dynastic’ lust for power, for her leaked e-mails, for the war she unleashed in Syria and the Middle-East, and the ghastly ‘murder’ or ‘mob-lynching’ of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on the streets of the town where he was hiding. A video became viral in America those days, that of Hillary laughing her guts out as she was shown the ‘grand finale’ of Gaddafi’s life and times, his bloodied face, and ravaged body, being dragged on the streets, finally, bayoneted, from his behind. That diabolical laughter lost her a lot of her potential and entrenched constituency, especially among the young and the antiwar sections, though she won a ‘bigger’ vote share in the ‘typical’ American presidential polls, even while Trump trumped across more states than her. Indeed, even while the ‘secret Russian roulette’, and ‘Dial M for Moscow’ thriller allegedly orchestrated Julian Assange’s Wikileaks days before the final polling, with Putin’s shadow looming large over ‘buddy’ Trump’s shrill, supremacist, racist, misogynist and xenophobic campaign, the results gave out clear signals to the people of America and the world.
The democrats finally found out several bitter realities which they had buried, ostrich-like, celebrating the magical illusions of the Barack Obama years: One, that their vote share was restricted to the ‘blue’ coastal zones and cities of upper/middle class urban America, while the vast, isolated and empty countryside, steeped in joblessness, zero social security, daily deprivations in a cold-blooded topheavy economy, and literally with no access to higher education, chose to go for the mass phobia of ‘outsiders’ taking over ‘white America’, the ‘white supremacist’ narrative of ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘America First’. They were convinced that ‘outsiders’, especially Latinos and Mexicans, were taking over their jobs and social and economic spaces. Plus, Trump evoked another dangerous spectre: the spectre of Islamophobia. Indeed, large sections of upper-end white women too voted for Trump, even while AfroAmericans and others backed Hillary.
So Trump declared that he will create a mythical wall across the Mexican border, paid by the Mexicans, stop illegal immigrants/refugees, deport those who are illegal, create jobs and money, stop funding the NATO and United Nations etc. He started off by banning the entry of people from six Muslim countries of the middleeast, which led to protests across all international airports in the US, apart from several court injunctions declaring his ‘order’ null and void. However, the bitter taste in the mouth and the poison in the air remained stark and transparent. One Pakistani women professional, a US citizen, told this reporter, “I get out of the house, and I feel as if several eyes are looking at me.” One PhD scholar from India, said, “Sometimes I am afraid that they will kill me since guns are allowed.”
The bitter taste and the poison spread across several continents, and in India too, while supporters of Narendra Modi said that he has anticipated Trump on the victory lap. His extremist followers celebrated Trump’s birthday at Jantar Mantar in Delhi with a ‘havan’. In Europe, a Neo-Nazi wave swept the undercurrents from the Netherlands, Austria, Hungry to Britain, France and Germany. In the Middle-East, the Wahabi fundamentalists started flexing their muscles, backed by US ally Saudi Arabia, even as new wars and mass tragedy loomed large on the horizon. Surely, Trump was in the air.
The poison in the air was sweetened, and blocked, finally, in Europe. The Dutch defeated the prototypes of the Neo-Nazis. Angela Merkel in Germany went against the current and accepted one million Syrian refugees and others from the conflict zones. Later, she led a coalition and won against the xenophobic forces, who grew in strength but were marginalized. In France, a young Emmanuel Macron emerged from the blues and ushered in an element of jazz in Paris and elsewhere, while not only defeating the ‘fascists’ but also celebrating a new language of liberation with several eminent women professionals taking up top positions in his cabinet. Between Macron and Merkel, along with Greece and others, the European Union took a decisive position against the vitiating Trump narrative, as was witnessed in the collective defiance of Trump’s adamant and irrational posture on global warming. Besides, in Britain, the Brexit loyalists got a shock of their life in the sudden elections called by Theresa May, with a huge decline in vote share and seats in Parliament, with ‘Leftist’ Jeremy Corbynn becoming the new red star in the British sky.
In India, an era of hate crimes, moblynching and murders, crude and violent muscle power on the streets, lumpen intolerance, crushing of dissent, and attacks on students, Dalits and minorities, dominated the murky landscape. With the fall-out of demonitisation and GST becoming starkly negative, it damaged the political economy, and rendered thousands jobless, pushing them into the margins, especially daily wagers, farmers, small-scale entrepreneurs, traders, businessmen, even as mass employment stalked the land including in the ‘white and blue collar’ sectors like the IT and manufacturing industry.
Even as Modi’s charisma remained intact, backed by a servile and sycophantic media operating almost like his fake news PR machinery, the post-truth was the writing on the wall: that his graph has gone down drastically, though he might win elections using the BJP’s final trump card: communal polarization. Indeed, all his grand projects seemed to have turned into ‘jumlas’ with Feku jokes flooding tweeter and social media: Digital India, Stand Up India, Skill India, Swachh Bharat, Rs 15 lakh in every bank account after getting black money from foreign shores back, Namami Gange, Bullet Trains, you name it. The year-end saw Modi scraping through in Gujarat, his bastion, finally using all kinds of fake allegations and daily histrionics and drama, even while totally avoiding the mention of the ‘famous’ Gujarat Model, or the two feathers in his cap: demonitisation and GST
This was also a year of spontaneous protests across the nation, non-partisan and not affiliated to any political party or ideology. From school girl Gurmehar Kaur to young girls in BHU, from a social media call by a Delhi-based woman filmmaker, Saba Dewan, becoming a nation-wide ‘Not in My Name’ protest, to thousands of journalists coming out on the streets against the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh in Bangalore, and two other journalists in Tripura; from tens of thousands of farmers and workers blocking Delhi’s Parliament Street for days, to farmer protests and police firing across the heartland – Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan – it was truly a year of mass unrest without any strings attached, totally outside the control of any political party or vested interests
Hundreds of girls students and men too walked across small towns and cities in India, in support of the girls in BHU, who were beaten up in the campus and inside their hostel by male police for demanding action against goons who would routinely harass them. In the Not in My Name protests, singers, musicians, artists, theatre persons and actors joined students and ordinary people across 100 places in Delhi and all over the country, saying ‘No to Hate’. The year ended with the ghastly video shot by a Hindutva fanatic who murdered a Muslim labourer from Bengal in Rajasmand, Rajasthan, hacked and burnt him to death, even as his young nephew filmed the horrifying spectacle. Those who have seen the video, could not sleep for days.
There were happier notes too. Young Hadiya, a potential homoeopathic doctor, stoic and resilient, stood for her love and freedom in the Supreme Court which allowed her to carry on her further studies – and thereby freed her from the forced imprisonment of her family. The latest picture of the couple celebrating their first anniversary brought a smile all around, as love wins over yet again against the vicious campaigners of ‘love jihad’ with not an iota of evidence to prove their fake charges.
Even as Hollywood erupted, with skeletons trooping out one after another, cases of sexual harassment and assaults against women by big-time producers, actors etc, including against top actresses, poured out across the glitzy American skyline. One after another, actresses and others in the industry have come out, citing instances of direct and indirect sexual harassment against hitherto highly acclaimed international celebrities. This spread like fire across other professions, including in the academia. Before Christmas, three top orchestras have refused to work with their ‘world famous’ conductor, on charges of sexual harassment.
The charges brought back bad memories for Donald Trump too, with women who had accused him during the campaign of ‘groping’ etc, once again coming out in the open. Even Nikki Hailey, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, backed these women, much to the embarrassment of the White House.
This also triggered a ‘Me Too’ campaign across the globe, on social media and elsewhere, including in India, with women coming out in the open against the ghastly experiences they have gone through in their lives. The social media was flooded with thousands of girls and women coming out, often with graphic and gory details, how they have been degraded, brutalized and humiliated over the years by a malechauvinist, misogynist and predatory society. The campaign ushered in despair, but a wave of hope and courage too, as a new feminist phenomena in the assertion of women’s rights. The Time Magazine declared the ‘Me Too’ movement as the ‘Person of the Year’.
The year-ender once again arrived with the hangover of Trump, who suddenly decided to declare Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, defying all international conventions and protocols, universally agreed, including by the United Nations. Palestine has always claimed East Jerusalem as its inherited capital, now occupied by Israel. So much so, he and Nikki Hailey on his behalf, threatened that they will be watching all those who defy Trump and the US, and choose to vote against him. In the end, yet again, Trump has got egg on his face, even as the whole ‘multi-polar’ world watched with a certain irony and amusement.
Surely, the Bush doctrine of either ‘I or the highway’, or, ‘with us or against us’, simply did not work in the contemporary global strategic scenario. In the United Nations General Assembly, a block of 128 countries, including India, voted against Trump’s unilateral declaration, backing the Security Council’s resolution on Jerusalem, thereby consolidating Palestine’s right to East Jerusalem. Only six countries voted against: Israel, Honduras, Guatemala, and three small Pacific Island nations. As many as 35 countries, including neighbours, Canada and Mexico, abstained. Significantly, France and Britain, plus 28 EU countries, most of East Pacific and South Asia and Southeast Asia, including South Korea and Japan, almost the entire Arab and Muslim world, including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Egypt, voted against Trump. South Africa has declared that it is cutting the American embassy size, while even a small African country like Botswana has said that it will not be cowed down by the US when it comes to the question of Jerusalem and Palestine. That means something.
Indeed, as Merry Christmas and Happy New Year arrives, putting the curtain to 2017, and bringing in cheer in 2018, hopefully, the bells will chime happily in Jerusalem, even as blessings, gifts, love and good cheer permeates the nooks and corners of the world, bringing joy and sunshine to all humanity, across religion, colour, caste and creed. In the ‘Silent Nights’ of the sublime old choir, may the songs of hope and wonder make the world a better and beautiful place.
Happy New Year. Cheers!