Rest In Power Mehmet Aksoy

 It was a horrible shock to hear the news that my good friend and comrade Mehmet Aksoy had been martyred at the hands of the ISIS. I have known Mehmet for over five years. When I was in the UK, I had worked with him on building solidarity between the Kurdish and the Tamil struggles. I admired his piercing political clarity, uncompromising commitment to the struggle of his people, and his principled approach to fellow oppressed nations. The Kurdish people have lost a great activist and the Tamils a great comrade.

The last time we met in 2015, he said that I should join with him on a trip to Rojava to study the movement there first hand. This was not to happen as I had to return. I do hope to visit Rojava, the most important site of Revolution in the 21st century, at some point of time in the future. But this will be a trip without dear Mehmet.

Here is a video where I had interviewed him for TamilNet. Comrade Aksoy’s poignant words still echo:

“The system that oppresses us is global. The system that oppresses us is united and in solidarity with each other. So we need to be in solidarity with each other against the same system that oppresses us. The Tamil national liberation struggle is a case in point. Your enemies are our enemies.”

Salutes to you my friend! Your martyrdom will be avenged by the victorious Revolution of the Kurdish people.

Feudal Feminism etc…

While Asian women who live ‘western lifestyles’ are slut-shamed on the streets, the academese counterpart of it is to criticize them for conforming to ‘capitalist delusions’. Like this gibberish which argues that Muslim women who conform to tradition are more liberated than Muslim women who supposedly conform to capitalism. By this article, the old Muslim lady who suspects love-marriages is a proto-feminist. I suppose then the Muslim man who slaughters his female relative for entering into a love relationship with someone he doesnt like is a fervent anti-colonialist. The Hindu Right must take note of these arguments; now, the Khap Panchayats can legitimately claim that their expecting Hindu women to conform to pure traditional lifestyles is actually a resistance to Western capitalism! I mean, if old Muslim women were liberated in their purdahs, I am sure old Brahmin and Rajput women are also quite liberated in their caste communities. And kindly dont expect Jats to conform to your liberal white western lifestyles please!

As objectifying as capitalism may be, the liberal Muslim women whom this author hates with a blind fury have the liberty to walk out of an abusive relationship, marry someone else, remain single, or go lesbian. The Islamist mothers and grandmothers whom the author glorifies, however, never had this choice.Liberal western feminism has many problems. Not conforming to Islamic feudal values, however, is definitely not one of them. And if there were a choice between the two, I will gladly go with the former.

The battle for Kobane offers a glimpse of Kurds’ new model democracy

Article originally published on The Conversation

As the battle against Islamic State fighters draws in viewers across the world, there has been some attention given to the men and women resisting them in northern Syria. The Syrian part of Kurdistan, or Rojava, as the Kurds would like to call it, has been fighting Islamists for well over two years now but only recently has the battle for the border town of Kobane brought them to light.

And while it’s easy to portray the Kurdish people as pitted against this new terrorist threat, they are actually involved in something far more profound. Kobane is symbolic and the conflict there carries a universal significance. Not only are the Kurds battling the Islamists, but they are also attempting to create a model of democracy that might actually bring stability to a war-torn region.

The Kurdish political vision is not founded on any particular racial, ethnic, regional or religious belief but rather on an idea, or a set of ideas, that should resonate with people everywhere.

Fighters in Kobane claim to be standing up for the freedom of everyone in the region, be they Kurds, Turks, Arabs or anyone else. The way the fighters in Kobane have challenged stereotypical gender roles is just one example.

As far as religious difference goes, Kobane disproves both Islamophobes who believe the Middle East to be incapable of progress and politically correct Islamophiles who push the patronising idea that religious identity is a top priority for Muslims the world over. In their readiness to defend the Yazidi minority against persecution from IS, the Kurds have essentially been promoting a radical secularism and a vision of tolerance in a region torn by religious strife.

What is novel about the Kurdish struggle for self-determination is its very definition of self-determination. The concept, when applied to nations, is generally taken to mean the right of nations to secede and form states of their own, but the Kurds see it differently. Many believe an experiment in democratic confederalism is what the region really needs.

This is an idea espoused by PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan, who is a central intellectual and moral figure for Kurds. The PKK, or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, has been fighting Turkey for greater autonomy since 1978 and has also trained Kurdish fighters in Kobane. Ocalan’s writing, compiled from within the confines of a Turkish prison where he has languished for about 15 years, has provided a solid ideological plank for the Kurdish struggle. He believes nation states are inherently oppressive. While oppressed groups might have a legitimate desire to form states of their own, even such newly formed states only serve to replace one form of domination with another. For him, the nation state is linked to xenophobic nationalism, sexism and religious fundamentalism.

Democratic confederalism is a system of governance that would be based on greater collective consensus and voluntary participation. Ecology and feminism are seen as central pillars for local self-governance. It calls for an economic system that should be based neither on exploiting human labour nor the unsound use of natural resources.

Kobane has essentially implemented this theory in practice. The ideas might seem utopian and realists may, quite legitimately, question the sustainability of autonomous communes that do not have the political or military backing of a centralised state. But as Oscar Wilde said, progress is the realisation of Utopia. Maybe Kobane’s progress is just that.

The struggle for Kobane is an event of global significance on a par with the Declaration of Independence, the Storming of the Bastille, the Paris Commune, or the Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu. Success for the Kurds would challenge established intellectual, ethical and political horizons.

At a time when right-wing parties are growing in Europe and elsewhere, and minority fundamentalism is growing in parallel, the Kurds are offering something different and it should not be ignored. In that sense, they are fighting for everyone.

The glass is full Sir. But where are you?

The first party at your house in New Delhi. You asked me “Karthick, why is your glass empty?”

The glass is full today Sir. But where are you?

I know that you didn’t like me calling you ‘Sir’. You said that it was a legacy of colonialism. You wanted me to call you just Pandian. As a friend. As a comrade. But sorry Sir, I am just too much a product of a colonial mentality. You will always be ‘Sir’ to me.

As you will be ‘Sir’ to my good friend Kalai. I knew you as a mentor and a great teacher. He knew you as a father figure. But today, both of us are alone. Sir, Kalai called me from Cambodia where he had gone for a conference a few days back. He is doing very well. He told me how much I still had to learn from Pandian Sir. He told me to re-read your writings on Periyar and the Dravidian movement. You had so much confidence and faith in him. He was your prodigal son. He was with you in your last hours. How could you leave him? How could you leave us? Where are you?

You have inspired countless students. You have left your indelible mark in the academia. You are, without doubt, the foremost among Tamil intellectuals. You have stuck to your principles. You defended Periyar and that great old man’s principles in a context when a horde was out to unjustly defame him. You were tooth and nail opposed to all forms of casteism and exposed how it operates both at the level of the political and the personal. You have always stood by the cause of the oppressed. At a time when several Tamil intellectuals behaved in a most unprincipled manner, you said in the middle of a class in JNU that you supported the LTTE’s cause. You supported Kashmir even before it became popular in Tamil Nadu. You, the eternal iconoclast, took on several icons and brought them down. Can I talk of certain really subversive acts that you did during your tenure in JNU? Or maybe that is strictly between us? You have been a great family man to your wife and your daughter. You have been a great human being. What have we lost? What has the world of the South Asian oppressed lost? A Sartre? A Fanon? A Gramsci? I know that you would say that I am being too emotional here. Go ahead and say it Sir, with that affectionate laughter that accompanies whenever you chide me. But where are you?

You taught me to re-evaluate my political understanding. You taught me to challenge everything I thought I knew. You introduced Zizek, Schmitt, Sontag and Agamben to me. You re-introduced Periyar to me. You helped shape my PhD proposal. You gave me academic references. You gave me invaluable feedback on my chapters even though you were pressed for time. But there was so much still left for you to teach me. But where are you?

You dropped several words of wisdom to me in your lighter moments. “Karthick, cook for the one you love.” “Karthick, don’t take yourself too seriously.” “Karthick, at times, letting go can be as important as holding on.” “Karthick, there is fine difference between a pamphleteer and an academic.” “Karthick, understand the line between being and acting.” Have I grasped them all? I need you to tell me. But where are you?

I know that I could not push my intellectual horizons as much as you wished me to. I know that you were disappointed that I could never transcend the nationalist paradigm. You thought it was your failure. No Sir, it was mine. Maybe this is what I am meant to be, what I need to be. This might be our eternal disagreement. More than anything else, I would love to debate with you just to hear you prove me wrong.  But where are you?

In our last conversation a few days back on gchat I told you “you were the best teacher I had. but I am still structurally unable to transcend the ‘alternative nationalism’ paradigm.”

You replied, “Get rid of the thesis. We will have a long long conversation. That is a promise. Bye, brother. :)”

I will be done with my thesis soon. I will come to Chennai soon. The glasses will be full again soon. There will be a long, long conversation soon. But where is your promise? Where are you?

Maybe you are still here. Maybe you always will be.

Friend. Comrade. Guide.