---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Hindol Bhattacharjee <hindol.myself@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 9:04 PM
Subject: An Open Letter to the Prime Minister of India
To: Ankur Saha <ankur.saha@gmail.com>, ANIRBAN DHARITRIPUTRA <anuvartan@gmail.com>, Aryanil Mukherjee <aryanil@kaurab.com>, Anita Agnihotri <agnihotrianita@yahoo.co.in>, Arun Sen <100arunsen@gmail.com>, avik bhattacharya <urantubri@yahoo.co.in>, angsuman bhowmick <anshurchithi@gmail.com>, Anirban Chattopadhyay <Anirban.Chattopadhyay@abp.in>, anupam mukhopadhyay <anupam_gtl@yahoo.co.in>, subhro banerjee <subhro_poesia@yahoo.com>, "kokhono somoy ashe jibon muchki hashe....." <mailme_srijan@rediffmail.com>, somnath ghosh <blackmalat@gmail.com>, sandip dutta <lmlibrary@hotmail.com>, Little Magazine Somonnoy Mancha <litmag_mancha@yahoo.com>, Palash Biswas <palashbiswaskl@gmail.com>, Kalyan Rudra <rudra.kalyan@gmail.com>, Krishna Banerjee <kbandyo@gmail.com>, Goutam Ghosh Dastidar <ggdastidar@hotmail.com>, Gautam Basu <96gautam@gmail.com>, Golnaz M <golnazm@gmail.com>, "Goutam(Gary) Datta" <goutamgarydatta@gmail.com>, manas ghosh <mg@thestatesman.net>, gc16332@gmail.com, gcs4@columbia.edu
Cc: Noam Chomsky <chomsky@mit.edu>
--
Hindol Bhattacharjee
From: Hindol Bhattacharjee <hindol.myself@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 9:04 PM
Subject: An Open Letter to the Prime Minister of India
To: Ankur Saha <ankur.saha@gmail.com>, ANIRBAN DHARITRIPUTRA <anuvartan@gmail.com>, Aryanil Mukherjee <aryanil@kaurab.com>, Anita Agnihotri <agnihotrianita@yahoo.co.in>, Arun Sen <100arunsen@gmail.com>, avik bhattacharya <urantubri@yahoo.co.in>, angsuman bhowmick <anshurchithi@gmail.com>, Anirban Chattopadhyay <Anirban.Chattopadhyay@abp.in>, anupam mukhopadhyay <anupam_gtl@yahoo.co.in>, subhro banerjee <subhro_poesia@yahoo.com>, "kokhono somoy ashe jibon muchki hashe....." <mailme_srijan@rediffmail.com>, somnath ghosh <blackmalat@gmail.com>, sandip dutta <lmlibrary@hotmail.com>, Little Magazine Somonnoy Mancha <litmag_mancha@yahoo.com>, Palash Biswas <palashbiswaskl@gmail.com>, Kalyan Rudra <rudra.kalyan@gmail.com>, Krishna Banerjee <kbandyo@gmail.com>, Goutam Ghosh Dastidar <ggdastidar@hotmail.com>, Gautam Basu <96gautam@gmail.com>, Golnaz M <golnazm@gmail.com>, "Goutam(Gary) Datta" <goutamgarydatta@gmail.com>, manas ghosh <mg@thestatesman.net>, gc16332@gmail.com, gcs4@columbia.edu
Cc: Noam Chomsky <chomsky@mit.edu>
To
Dr. Man Mohan Singh
Prime Minister of India.
Dear Sir,
As the elected Prime Minister of this democratic country, we – the trusting millions – who voted you to power - write to you to request you a special favour. By you, we mean you, your Cabinet, your Party and your Chairperson Mrs. Sonia Gandhi.
You say that you are working for the "aam admi" (common man) of this country. In the name of 'development', you are asking us to give away our lands, our homes, our villages and asking us to pack our bags and go away. But where do we go?
Land all along the coast is being given away – millions of acres of productive land – to set up chemical factories, thermal power plants, and nuclear power plants. The control of sea is being given away to corporations to drill oil and gas. Fish workers are being told that since their fishing doesn't earn money to the government, you want to encourage huge fishing trawlers from overseas to fish in our waters, so the government can harvest revenue. Where will the fish be – once all the sea is polluted from chemical factories? They are being told to give away their villages and their lands to set up coastal police stations, naval bases, and atomic research centres among others. You say - all this is needed for national security. Who is this nation, we wonder.
Our farmers and farm labourers, toddy tappers and other artisans living inland too have to make way for Industrial Zones, Industrial Corridors and Special Economic Zones. For these projects to thrive – you need infrastructure like roads, bridges, buildings and vehicles – so, for this purpose you are taking away our hills for mining – of limestone, granite, laterite, iron, aluminium etc. Besides, all these projects need electricity, for which you are taking away forests and river basins for mining coal and uranium and taking away the Himalayas for building dams. Therefore, the forest dwellers have to make way – leave their forests, and hills and rivers, and go away to assist the 'development' of mines and dams.
In other places, wherever land will be left after all this acquisition, farmers are being told that since their agriculture is not bringing in revenue, they must give up their lands to the Corporations for corporate agriculture. If not, at least they should agree to grow GM crops.
Becoming homeless, if we decide to come to the city, there is no work – since you don't want us to do even petty jobs like selling vegetables, fish, and footwear or even set up tiny barber shops. Even that you say - must be done by the Corporations. At one time, at least, we could sleep under the trees; now there are no trees in our cities…they too are unwanted species like us. Without work, without shelter we only have two options – to sell our children, our bodies and our organs or beg on the streets.
We began to wonder, so, who is this 'aam admi' for whom you are working so hard? And now we know the answer, it's none other than your billionaire blue eyed boys who are the "aam admi", for whom we – the teeming millions are being told to make sacrifices. And this must be done in "national interest". We now understand the word "nation" very well. It is for this "aam admi" and for this "nation's security" that you wish to buy so many guns and weapons, in exchange for which you are selling our lives like commodities. And we are all feeling extremely proud of these "aam admi's" achievements of becoming the richest people in the world. Our happiness at their success is making us forget that we are starving to death.
If by some quirk of fate, some of us decide to protest and say we will not leave our homes, and our villages, we don't want SEZs, or dams or thermal plants, or mines or nuclear plants or GM crops; you bring in the police to put us in jail. Or, we are killed. It is still fine, if we are killed in one go, but it doesn't happen that way, our own people are given guns in order to kill us. So brothers kill brothers while police rape our women and burn down our villages. But this is a "necessity" you say, in order for Law to prevail, for "development" to happen, for this "nation" to progress and reach its target of unending growth.
Perhaps being killed, is a better option than dying a slow and torturous death from starvation due to a lack of access to natural resources or suffer daily from untold diseases from the pollution of the air, food, water and soil from all the 'development' you are envisaging. So, we the poor millions of this country, have a very humble request. Please kill us all in one go – bomb us with that large storage of bombs for which you have sold this country – made people like us commodities in your unending thirst for becoming a Super Power. That would be a great relief for us and for you too.
For us, it would be a release from this daily torture - without having to endure the pain of constantly being treated like Cattle, herded one day this way, one day that, allowing us only to barely survive…never enough strength to question your motives.
For you, it will spare you the trouble – of constantly having to withstand people's resistance. Once you bomb us out – the entire land of India will be empty – for you and your super power corporations to dig wherever you want, to 'exploit' the land, mountains, rivers, forests and sea to the hilt and make all the money that you want. Besides you can actually 'test' the efficacy of the weapons / bombs that you have developed with so much pride and diligence and see indeed if they are useful for "national security".
Your faithful slaves,
(who live under the false impression of being citizens of this country)
Farmers, labourers, fisherfolk, adivasis, toddy tappers, weavers, potters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, barbers, small vendors, cattle herders, shepherds, pig farmers, duck farmers, poultry farmers, plough makers…and countless other rural artisans…
Dr. Man Mohan Singh
Prime Minister of India.
Dear Sir,
As the elected Prime Minister of this democratic country, we – the trusting millions – who voted you to power - write to you to request you a special favour. By you, we mean you, your Cabinet, your Party and your Chairperson Mrs. Sonia Gandhi.
You say that you are working for the "aam admi" (common man) of this country. In the name of 'development', you are asking us to give away our lands, our homes, our villages and asking us to pack our bags and go away. But where do we go?
Land all along the coast is being given away – millions of acres of productive land – to set up chemical factories, thermal power plants, and nuclear power plants. The control of sea is being given away to corporations to drill oil and gas. Fish workers are being told that since their fishing doesn't earn money to the government, you want to encourage huge fishing trawlers from overseas to fish in our waters, so the government can harvest revenue. Where will the fish be – once all the sea is polluted from chemical factories? They are being told to give away their villages and their lands to set up coastal police stations, naval bases, and atomic research centres among others. You say - all this is needed for national security. Who is this nation, we wonder.
Our farmers and farm labourers, toddy tappers and other artisans living inland too have to make way for Industrial Zones, Industrial Corridors and Special Economic Zones. For these projects to thrive – you need infrastructure like roads, bridges, buildings and vehicles – so, for this purpose you are taking away our hills for mining – of limestone, granite, laterite, iron, aluminium etc. Besides, all these projects need electricity, for which you are taking away forests and river basins for mining coal and uranium and taking away the Himalayas for building dams. Therefore, the forest dwellers have to make way – leave their forests, and hills and rivers, and go away to assist the 'development' of mines and dams.
In other places, wherever land will be left after all this acquisition, farmers are being told that since their agriculture is not bringing in revenue, they must give up their lands to the Corporations for corporate agriculture. If not, at least they should agree to grow GM crops.
Becoming homeless, if we decide to come to the city, there is no work – since you don't want us to do even petty jobs like selling vegetables, fish, and footwear or even set up tiny barber shops. Even that you say - must be done by the Corporations. At one time, at least, we could sleep under the trees; now there are no trees in our cities…they too are unwanted species like us. Without work, without shelter we only have two options – to sell our children, our bodies and our organs or beg on the streets.
We began to wonder, so, who is this 'aam admi' for whom you are working so hard? And now we know the answer, it's none other than your billionaire blue eyed boys who are the "aam admi", for whom we – the teeming millions are being told to make sacrifices. And this must be done in "national interest". We now understand the word "nation" very well. It is for this "aam admi" and for this "nation's security" that you wish to buy so many guns and weapons, in exchange for which you are selling our lives like commodities. And we are all feeling extremely proud of these "aam admi's" achievements of becoming the richest people in the world. Our happiness at their success is making us forget that we are starving to death.
If by some quirk of fate, some of us decide to protest and say we will not leave our homes, and our villages, we don't want SEZs, or dams or thermal plants, or mines or nuclear plants or GM crops; you bring in the police to put us in jail. Or, we are killed. It is still fine, if we are killed in one go, but it doesn't happen that way, our own people are given guns in order to kill us. So brothers kill brothers while police rape our women and burn down our villages. But this is a "necessity" you say, in order for Law to prevail, for "development" to happen, for this "nation" to progress and reach its target of unending growth.
Perhaps being killed, is a better option than dying a slow and torturous death from starvation due to a lack of access to natural resources or suffer daily from untold diseases from the pollution of the air, food, water and soil from all the 'development' you are envisaging. So, we the poor millions of this country, have a very humble request. Please kill us all in one go – bomb us with that large storage of bombs for which you have sold this country – made people like us commodities in your unending thirst for becoming a Super Power. That would be a great relief for us and for you too.
For us, it would be a release from this daily torture - without having to endure the pain of constantly being treated like Cattle, herded one day this way, one day that, allowing us only to barely survive…never enough strength to question your motives.
For you, it will spare you the trouble – of constantly having to withstand people's resistance. Once you bomb us out – the entire land of India will be empty – for you and your super power corporations to dig wherever you want, to 'exploit' the land, mountains, rivers, forests and sea to the hilt and make all the money that you want. Besides you can actually 'test' the efficacy of the weapons / bombs that you have developed with so much pride and diligence and see indeed if they are useful for "national security".
Your faithful slaves,
(who live under the false impression of being citizens of this country)
Farmers, labourers, fisherfolk, adivasis, toddy tappers, weavers, potters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, barbers, small vendors, cattle herders, shepherds, pig farmers, duck farmers, poultry farmers, plough makers…and countless other rural artisans…
--
Hindol Bhattacharjee
--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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