Dislike Bush Love Marx Globalise Gandhi

Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri B & E Editorial

Volume 1 Issue 1, 12 August - 25 August 2005

Every, simply every Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi residing in America I happen to meet, seems to dislike Bush. My friend from IIPM, who at one time loved staying in the intellectual capital of the world – Boston – today feels “definitely alienated” as a brown in America.

• “We are always being looked at with suspicion,” she says. Her gym instructor talks about “outsourcing” in a sarcastic tone when they meet. And other Americans still feel bad to see browns earning more than the whites – her husband being a doctor.
• The wife of a Pakistani friend of mine – a doctor himself – is deliberately asked more than once by other women coming to pick up their children from a New Jersey school, if she is the kid’s maid servant.
• And my Bangladeshi friend who stays in one of the most upscale localities of New York, is asked by her neighbours, deliberately again, whether she is the new janitor.
• All my friends feel that this discrimination, though always prevalent, was much lesser earlier; and that it’s not worth staying in the US anymore (not to talk about rising prices and a growing difference between the ‘haves’ and ‘less haves’).

The bottom- line is very clear. Bush is pathetic for all of them; and for about half of the US who didn’t vote for him. Those who voted for him are not half as passionate about him, as those who are against him. Never perhaps in recent history has a President of the world’s most admired country been so disliked across the world, and been looked down upon as a role model to the young ones.

Interestingly, on the other hand, in a poll conducted by BBC (post 7/7), Karl Marx got voted as the world’s greatest ever philosopher, getting more than 29 percent votes out of the 30,000 odd votes, leaving the next in the race way behind at 12 percent. This, despite a huge campaign by the pro-Bush media against voting for Marx. The growing love for Marx was earlier given credence, when none other than George Soros, after spending years in the stock market, said that Marx and Engels were perfectly right in their analysis of capitalism. Marx’s thoughts on globalisation are today being looked upon as startlingly relevant by leading economists around the globe.

Venezuelan President Chavez recently handed over hundreds of idle companies to worker cooperatives, and stated, “Revolutionary democracy is the transition, the bridge, the path towards ‘socialism of the 21st century’, one that is Bolivian, Venezuelan, and Latin American.” He also floated ‘Telesur’, the Latin American television channel, to counter the “cultural imperialism” that was occurring thanks to the CNN/BBC kind of lopsided reporting, which ignored developing country perspectives.

A friend’s nine year old son, who was born in the US, wants to become the first American President with Indian roots. His reasoning is simple: The Americans need to learn the most invaluable Gandhian principle of ‘non-violence’, and only an Indian can teach them that. As the hatred for Bush grows, whether the world will see the revival of Marxism might still be debatable, but the globalisation of Gandhian ideology is surely the need of the hour. Else, we might have to live with Bush’s warring methods – a time proven symbol of typical capitalist greed ‘For A Few Dollars More’.