Janaki & Rebecca Kumar
*Exclusive interview with author, professor and activist Vijay Prashad*
*Exclusive interview with author, professor and activist Vijay Prashad*
It would be difficult to find a self-identified “progressive” within the South Asian diaspora (or anyone involved in diaspora studies, progressive/identity politics) who has not come across Vijay Prashad. Author of fourteen books, (including the well-known Karma of Brown Folk) Prashad is a journalist, historian, and frequent writer for publications like Counterpunch and Frontline. He has contributed to documenting the history of the Global South, the story of the South Asian American diaspora, and continues to provide critical commentary on current socio-economic and political matters of interest around the world. Prof. Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where I had the pleasure of working with him as a student and research assistant. Our team here at Brown Town has been engaged in conversations about understanding and reconsidering the South Asian American Left. We wanted to return to the basics and rethink our grievances from the ground-up. How have we historically defined terms like “justice” and “solidarity” and how does time and movement of political climate alter those terms? What’s wrong with liberalism? What is our place in Leftist movements like Occupy Wall Street? What is the role of the Academy in political parlance and action? In this two-part series, Prof. Prashad has graciously agreed to answer our questions. - J
Brown Town: Can you reiterate your understanding of ‘solidarity’ and ‘justice’ and their aims with regard to both Karma of Brown Folk and, now, Uncle Swami?
Vijay Prashad: When I wrote Karma of Brown Folk, the context was very particular. There were perhaps three different political problems that I came out of: (1) the lack of recognition by the new desi migrants of the work that had been done to pave the way for our enjoyment of tacit equality in the US, and so in particular the lack of understanding and acknowledgment of the advances from the Civil Rights Movement and our debt to African Americans, mainly, who had taken the fight to their bodies; (2) the easy drift of the new migrants into the desire for advancement of ourselves or our families parallel to a sense that our convenience is one of the main parameters of our daily life. This meant that there was little sense of the context in which we were going to live, our reliance upon modes of avoidance of those who could not advance and our perfectly comfortable adoption of the typical middle class attitude to violations of our highest values (if there is inequality, well too bad, because to try and fix it is inconvenient, and so on); (3) the emergence, in the 1980s, of a virulent strand of right-wing Hindu fundamentalism into the ranks of the Indian American community, which leaked into the broader attempts to create social links across the totality of the migrants from the subcontinent. These were the three problems. They remain even now, but not quite as they did then (which is why, in Uncle Swami, bits and pieces of these problems reappear to be historically explained and addressed).
So, my interest in “solidarity” in that book was defined by this context rather than by a universal political grammar. I wanted to indicate that South Asian Americans had to be much more aware of Black struggles, so that we did not take a casually racist attitude toward the social dilemmas of African Americans; I wanted us to shed the focus on advancement and convenience and to adopt a much broader, much more humane perspective for our lives; I wanted us to shun the culture of cruelty proposed by the rise of Hindu fundamentalism, and equally all forms of social suffocation. Solidarity, therefore, was both intellectual (that is, to think outside the cage of “our” community’s history) and praxis-oriented (that is, I hoped we would get involved in struggles alongside other communities as a part of our own experience in the US).
The space for solidarity has narrowed today. Much less of it is on offer, even as the needs for solidarity have increased. The context today includes much of what I said above (since that has not been superseded) and then includes: (1) how, after 9/11 and really after 1993, we became part of the idea of “terrorist,” whether those who were actually deported or those who continue to be stared at, or, as in Wisconsin, be shot at; (2) how it is unacceptable for us to try to separate some of us from others, whether by saying we are not Muslims, they are, or by saying we are not terrorists, they are, when the fact is that the racist does not care about these distinctions; (3) how we have come to terms with racism, but we have not, as a community, admitted that domestic racism is integrally related to imperialism. So our solidarity has to be much wider now, much more capacious, open to different forms of oppression, different forms of exploitation. All this requires scrupulous analysis, which is the role of the intellectual, to find the way in which our myopia might actually be in bad faith.
Brown Town: Can you reiterate your understanding of ‘solidarity’ and ‘justice’ and their aims with regard to both Karma of Brown Folk and, now, Uncle Swami?
Vijay Prashad: When I wrote Karma of Brown Folk, the context was very particular. There were perhaps three different political problems that I came out of: (1) the lack of recognition by the new desi migrants of the work that had been done to pave the way for our enjoyment of tacit equality in the US, and so in particular the lack of understanding and acknowledgment of the advances from the Civil Rights Movement and our debt to African Americans, mainly, who had taken the fight to their bodies; (2) the easy drift of the new migrants into the desire for advancement of ourselves or our families parallel to a sense that our convenience is one of the main parameters of our daily life. This meant that there was little sense of the context in which we were going to live, our reliance upon modes of avoidance of those who could not advance and our perfectly comfortable adoption of the typical middle class attitude to violations of our highest values (if there is inequality, well too bad, because to try and fix it is inconvenient, and so on); (3) the emergence, in the 1980s, of a virulent strand of right-wing Hindu fundamentalism into the ranks of the Indian American community, which leaked into the broader attempts to create social links across the totality of the migrants from the subcontinent. These were the three problems. They remain even now, but not quite as they did then (which is why, in Uncle Swami, bits and pieces of these problems reappear to be historically explained and addressed).
So, my interest in “solidarity” in that book was defined by this context rather than by a universal political grammar. I wanted to indicate that South Asian Americans had to be much more aware of Black struggles, so that we did not take a casually racist attitude toward the social dilemmas of African Americans; I wanted us to shed the focus on advancement and convenience and to adopt a much broader, much more humane perspective for our lives; I wanted us to shun the culture of cruelty proposed by the rise of Hindu fundamentalism, and equally all forms of social suffocation. Solidarity, therefore, was both intellectual (that is, to think outside the cage of “our” community’s history) and praxis-oriented (that is, I hoped we would get involved in struggles alongside other communities as a part of our own experience in the US).
The space for solidarity has narrowed today. Much less of it is on offer, even as the needs for solidarity have increased. The context today includes much of what I said above (since that has not been superseded) and then includes: (1) how, after 9/11 and really after 1993, we became part of the idea of “terrorist,” whether those who were actually deported or those who continue to be stared at, or, as in Wisconsin, be shot at; (2) how it is unacceptable for us to try to separate some of us from others, whether by saying we are not Muslims, they are, or by saying we are not terrorists, they are, when the fact is that the racist does not care about these distinctions; (3) how we have come to terms with racism, but we have not, as a community, admitted that domestic racism is integrally related to imperialism. So our solidarity has to be much wider now, much more capacious, open to different forms of oppression, different forms of exploitation. All this requires scrupulous analysis, which is the role of the intellectual, to find the way in which our myopia might actually be in bad faith.
Brown Town: What was your take on the “Occupy Wall St.” movement? What did the movement mean for South Asians (or other immigrant communities) in particular?
Vijay Prashad: I remain positive about OWS. I think it opens up the Left to mass politics, and it offers vitality to a Left that had been for too long ensconced in the shadows. I traveled to many OWS sites, from NYC to Boston, to Chicago and to smaller towns in the east coast. I wrote about these trips for Counterpunch. Each location had its own kind of character, and its own political obsessions (debt in Boston, workers rights in Chicago).
It was also the case that there were a lot of problems in the everyday life of the manifestations.This is to be expected: there are no developed rules of everyday engagement in the Left. Even where there are such discussions, it is to be expected that there will be problems (violence against women and racism are a societal problems and one should not expect the Left to attract only those who are enlightened in their everyday life). The problem would be if the OWS did not take seriously the question of sexual violence or racism, and if there was no room to push these matters.
It was also the case that there were a lot of problems in the everyday life of the manifestations.This is to be expected: there are no developed rules of everyday engagement in the Left. Even where there are such discussions, it is to be expected that there will be problems (violence against women and racism are a societal problems and one should not expect the Left to attract only those who are enlightened in their everyday life). The problem would be if the OWS did not take seriously the question of sexual violence or racism, and if there was no room to push these matters.
Now there was reluctance to deal with the fragmentary nature of society, to be sure. But this was tackled head on. At OWS, it turned out that many of those who took the initiative such as Hena Ashraf, Sonny Singh, and Manissa Maharawal are desis! Various POC groups were formed, there was the Hip Hop community that came in to offer a different perspective, and then there was Oakland, where the issues escalated in the social and political domains. As Manissa was saying in those early days, OWS is “less a movement and more a space.” I think this is an insightful gesture. That means that the manifestation and what followed has opened up a kind of confidence that the Left need not remain isolated, but needs to seek out these openings to boldly suggest our own analyses, our program.
It took the Egyptians two decades to build their movements anew, after they had been smashed in the 1980s. It has taken us a long time to rebuild the space for the Left in the US. One should not be impatient. Tell no lies, as Cabral said, claim no easy victories. OWS was not perfect, and it was not a victory. It was an opening.
Brown Town: In your experience, does a large contingency of the South Asian progressive left speak from privilege? And do you feel that is there an assumption from the South Asian radical herself that other South Asians come from privilege?
Vijay Prashad: I have not had many interactions with Lefties who assume that every one of us comes from a wealthy, model minority background. Quite the contrary. There are many who deny their social roots, which is a natural thing to do in a context where personal identity is so important – if personal identity is fundamental, some might feel, how can I as a suburban person be authentically of the Left…. and so on. I don’t subscribe to this view, that one’s social roots, or one’s class position reflects fully one’s class instincts. The capacity of people to grow out of their social roots is great in all directions, whether when the middle class rise to affluence and then turn on the middle class itself; or when affluent youth adopt the ideological perspective of the Left and develop a new class instinct. So there is a great deal of dynamism in how one is political. This is natural.
Certainly, given the overwhelmingly middle class nature of the desi community, and of the upward mobility obligations of the lower middle class section of the community (the drivers, the kiosk workers), it is to be expected that those who have the space to move to the Left are those who come from some advantages (and had a college education) or else made a decisive break with the upward mobility obligations of the new migrant (this is very difficult, as one sees among domestic worker organizers and taxi organizers, and other desiswho join unions – the adverse conditions produce a qualitative shift in their sense of what is possible, to break with the expectation that there will be the American Dream for you despite all the sacrifices to get here – the parallel experience is amongst the undocumented, who had to be extraordinarily courageous to make their own break).
The point is neither to deny the privileges nor to treat them as a handicap, but to understand them and see if they can be mobilized toward widening the space of the Left rather than simply for individual advancement. That is our real task, it seems to me.
Brown Town: I find there is a big difference between theory, dogma, and the romance of language (particularly radical language)—and practicality, actuality, and action. Does the Left do more of the former and less the latter?
Vijay Prashad: I don’t agree with this distinction. From the standpoint of the Left, from Marxism at least, this duality (thought-action) is precisely what has to be annulled (the 11th thesis of Marx on Feuerbach was about this – “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it”). Thought is an important element in transformation, not secondary. Action has to be premised on an intellectual program; intellectual thinking of a Left tendency has to elaborate upon political experience and its context. There is an indelible relationship between action and thought. If thought breaks from practice, it becomes arid; if practice breaks from thought it loses its orientation, its beacon, its sense of why it is doing what it is doing, and where it proposes to traverse.
In the world of community organizing in the US, the discussions around a political program have been around for a very long time. I know that the Labor-Strategy Center (the product of the Bus Riders Union in LA) has been working on a program document for at least fifteen years (and forms a major part of the work at its National School for Strategic Organizing). In 2006, four San Francisco-based organizers (Jaron Browne, Marissa Franco, Steve Williams and Jason Negrón-Gonzáles) published Toward Land, Work & Power: Charting a Path of Resistance to US-Led Imperialism, which sought to find a path for the politics of community organizations and left political outfits. Organizers like Cindy Weisner (Grassroots Global Justice), N’gethe Maina (Social Justice Leadership), Ai-jen Poo (National Domestic Workers Alliance), Monami Maulik (DRUM) and Patrisse Cullors (Labor/Community Strategy Center) are examples of intellectuals who are at work, and workers who are always thinking of new strategies, new possibilities, and of course theoretically constructing new horizons to strive toward.
There is a bit of a divide in the academy, where the links with the social movements have not always been maintained. These were broken by McCarthyism, reformed in the 1960s, and then broken again by the attacks of the 1970s and 1980s (this was Governor Reagan’s attack on the UC system, and onwards to the corporatization of the university). There is a political attack as well as the emergence of this corporate university that led to the frayed relationship, but also there is the disappearance of a mass Left that made the Gown-Street relationship a bit difficult to maintain. But even here one should not exaggerate the break. There are teachers and professors who are very closely aligned with organizations that are on the move, and both sides have benefitted from the interaction. Why take the worst example of intellectualism on the one side and reformist action on the other as the place to hold the discussion about the divide? Take the best that we have, people like Ai-jen Poo and Steve Williams, Eric Mann and Suren Moodliar, Rishi Awantramani and Rinku Sen, Malcolm Chu and Willie JR Fleming, Deepa Iyer and Juanita Molina and build outward from there!
Brown Town: Is there a way for capitalism to not be seen as negative in the books of the Left-winger?
Vijay Prashad: The general tenor of capitalism has been to move toward a less and less humanistic phase. The lively workers movement and the nationalist movements of the 19th century pushed a dynamic capitalist system to “share the spoils.” As capitalism has entered a phrase of crisis from the 1970s onward, those who control capital have been sequestering larger shares of the surplus and acting like cannibals toward social wealth. The inequality rates are remarkable. Capital has been unable to produce jobs, with rates of joblessness now at very high levels around the planet. At the same time social security nets have vanished. The 1% has refused to pay taxes, so the governments around the world have been bled dry. There is simply no political will within the system we have now for a social democratic alternative. The parties of the mainstream no longer have a genuine social agenda. This is very dangerous.
Unless there is a fundamental shift in power relations between who gets to define the political order and take the spoils, we will remain in the thrall of the 1%. They take all the spoils and they define the terms of public policy. This is a scandal. I do not approach these questions morally. I see them in terms of interests and power. The 1% logically has tried to make the most of what they dominate. That is their ken. It is the role of the Left to unmask this relation, and to build an alternative. We have to think beyond the present and toward the future. If we do not build an adequate Left, the others answer are an increase in repression toward fascism (to encage unemployable people in prisons and in highly policed ghettos) or an increase in fascism from below (namely socially dangerous political tendencies: racist, misogynist, xenophobic and so on). There is only one choice for the Left. Scrupulous critique of the Far Right and of the Near Right and the production of a generous alternative both in ideas (and policies) and in institutions.
Stay tuned for Part Two on Friday, September 14th, 2012, in which Rebecca will focus on Vijay Prashad’s new book Uncle Swami, the upcoming election, and more. Thanks again to Prof. Prashad for engaging in this conversation.
Stay tuned for Part Two on Friday, September 14th, 2012, in which Rebecca will focus on Vijay Prashad’s new book Uncle Swami, the upcoming election, and more. Thanks again to Prof. Prashad for engaging in this conversation.
