Global Politics & Cultures (formerly Independent Thought & Freedom)

Welcome to the First Episode of Year 2 of Independent Thought and Freedom

India is the world's 3rd largest economy today, after the US and China, but it doesn't wield political and economic power in world affairs commensurate with its weight.

Compared to smaller economies Russia, Israel, Turkey, or even Iran, for instance, let alone China, India's influence pales in comparison.

At a time when the world is in turmoil from Hong Kong, to Iran to Syria to Venezuela, this is significant.

However, India has been undergoing a tremendous transformation domestically, with Narendra Modi and the BJP establishing its political dominance in a shift toward Hindutva nationalism.

This parallels shifting political paradigms all over the world from centrist liberalism to populist nationalism.

What role -- if any -- will India play in the current reshaping of the world that is occuring before our very eyes?

How will India reshape itself?

Today, my guest can perhaps answer this question better than anyone else.

I am honoured and pleased to welcome Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Member of Parliament of the Republic of India since 2009 and former Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of Human Resource Development.

Before getting in politics, Dr. Tharoor had a most distinguished career as a diplomat at the United Nations, last serving as UnderSecretary-General. He came in second place to replace Kofi Annan, losing to Ban Ki-Moon after he was vetoed by the United States.

Dr. Tharoor is also an acclaimed writer, having authored 18 bestselling works of fiction and non-fiction since 1981, and has written hundreds of columns and articles in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, Newsweek, and The Times of India. 

Throughout his career, he has received too many awards to mention, but I will just note the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, the Global Leader of Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum in Davos, GQ's Inspiration of the Year Award, "New Age Politician of the Year" Award, Digital Person of the Year award, PETA's person of the year, and it goes on and on. And there will be more to come, I am certain.

We discuss

- The refugee bill and the discrimination against non-Hindus
- Should religion determine the basis of nationhood?
- Religious fundamentalism difference between Pakistan Independence and Indian Independence
- The rise of the "chauvinistic" BJP as a betrayal of the secular Indian Independence struggle
- Should India be a homeland for Hindu refugees?
- challenging discrimination against Indian Muslims by the BJP
- balancing a critique of the old liberal, Western system with a defense of the universal relevance of Western democracy and secularism
- the BJP's narrow interpret
- Swami Vivekananda's critique of "tolerance" and advocacy of "acceptance"
- Hinduism as Indian liberalism vs. Hindutva as illiberal Hinduism
- the changes in nationalism from the Indian Independence Movement 
- George Orwell's differentiation between patriotism and nationalism
- the implications of these views for the place of India in the world
- his new book "New Word Disorder and the Indian Imperative"
- India's place in the new emerging world order

LISTEN to the FULL episode 13 of "Independent Thought & Freedom" w/ expelled and exiled Guyanese Parliamentarian Charrandass Persaud BELOW! 

Guyana's Political Skeletons in the Closet: vote-rigging, party paramountcy, the murder of Walter Rodney, Jim Jones and Rabbi Washington 

Present-day politics in Guyana, whether one realises it or not, is haunted by the ghosts of its past, which have not properly been laid to rest.

In its 53rd year of independence, a Guyanese government lost a vote of no-confidence for the first time. Charrandass Persaud, a member of the ruling coalition, cast his vote against his government in a surprise move.

This prompted a fellow Parliamentarian to physically hit him, and another to declare, "You gon dead tonight Charrandas!"

All this occurred without any rebuke from the Speaker.

Charrandass had to flee the country in fear of his life, as the Minister of National Security vowed to deal with Mr. Persaud.

These reactions don't simply come from "race" politics, as people have simplistically suggested.

It comes from a deep history of political violence, fraud, murder, ethnic cleansing, cults, and destablisation by the CIA and UK, in order to prevent a so-called "communist" party from coming to power.

These political skeletons have yet to be properly buried either in Guyana's history, the Caribbean, or the wider world.

As a result, Guyanese politics are haunted by these spectres, and the current saga of Charrandass Persaud must be put in this historical context, to understand the real danger that both he, and the country as a whole, faces.

LISTEN to the FULL episode 12 w/ historian Prof. Kapil Kumar BELOW!

As the world watches two nuclear-armed states in confrontation in Jammu & Kashmir, the Western media pushes a false framework that encourages rabid, mindless confrontation. 

Whereas the framework should be about terrorism and the appropriate responses to suicide bombers, instead the Western media stoke a false narrative about Hindu oppression of Muslims, and encourage Islamic religious fanaticism, where it is not the issue.

This gets to our very understanding of history itself.

The Western media has promoted a very false understanding and framework of Indian Independence, partition and the Jammu & Kashmir question.

While overall, Jammu & Kashmir is a majority Muslim state, geographically Muslims occupty only 15% of the area, in the Kashmir valley. Jammu is majority Hindu, and Ladakh is Buddhist.

But that is not even the issue.

India is not a Hindu, ethnic state. It is multi-religious.

Pakistan is an ethnic state, though, with Islam being the State religion. And Pakistan is strangely supported by the US militarily, against India.

Interestingly, however, although Pakistan was founded on the basis of religion, during the partition of India into India and Pakistan in 1947, a majority of Muslims decided to stay in India.

(According to Pew, Pakistan now has more Muslims than India (200m vs. 189m). This was until recently not the case, so in the video I apparently mistakenly claim otherwise.)

India was not founded on the basis of religion. The Indian Independence movement was ALWAYS multi-religious. 

And Indian Muslims continue to fight and sacrifice their lives against terrorists being sheltered in Pakistan.

To frame the Jammu & Kashmir conflict in terms of Hindu oppression of Muslims encourages ethnic analysis of problems; insults Indian Muslims, Hindus and others; ignores the legality of international borders; blames Indians for terrorism; and ignores the central problem of terrorists sheltering themselves in Pakistan.

The very framing of the conflict has to be re-shaped.

It is NOT Hindu vs. Muslim. It is multi-religious India vs. Islamic terrorists.

See the excerpt from my myth-busting interview with Professor Kapil Kumar, the Director of the Centre for Freedom Struggle & Diaspora Studies at the Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, India to learn more.

LISTEN to the FULL episode 10 w/ former political prisoner and author Mike Billington BELOW! 

While purportedly fighting for democracy and human rights in Venezuela and other countries, the US neglects abuses elsewhere, including at home.

What is also interesting is that even over long decades, you will find the same individuals involved in this home-grown, perverse American persecution.

One such person is Robert Mueller.

In the 1980s, as Robert Mueller was head of the "Get LaRouche" Task Force that brought the heavy hand of the American State down upon one of its visionary dissidents, the late Lyndon LaRouche.

Michael Billington was one of the Larouche Movement's leading activists, and experienced the full brunt of these long coordinated actions first hand.

In this excerpt of our recent conversation, Billington speaks of how Robert Mueller started to prosecute the LaRouche movement after Ronald Reagan adopted LaRouche's Strategic Defence Initiative.  
Interestingly, it was Roger Stone (the same one Mueller recently had arrested using a similar overwrought display of armed State force) who brought LaRouche's ideas to President Ronald Reagan's attention. These were designed to facilitate cooperation between the USA and the USSR at the time, similar to Trump's stated goals of wanting to work together with Russia and China.

Billington recounts the dramatic events when law enforcement and military forces surrounded the LaRouche headquarters in what appears to have been a preparation for a something like a deadly Waco, Texas event, which actually occurred in just a few years later.

Billington eventually received the harshest and longest sentence from the Mueller prosecution - 77 years -in what was clearly an abuse of process and wrongful prosecution.

Last week, Lyndon LaRouche passed away at the age of 96, just a few weeks after the Larouche Movement launched a petition to exonerate him and the others from these false charges.

This is very relevant for what is occurring today in the United States. I urge you to learn more and sign the petition.

The Audacity of Basdeo Panday, Part 3: Staying for the Struggle, Radical Trade Unionism, the Heartbreaking Death of Bhadase Maraj, Black Power, the Army Mutiny, Bloody Tuesday 

We continue our discussion with former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Basdeo Panday, radical trade unionist and first PM from the country's very large Indiian community. 

Panday's life is entwined with the most important global issues of the 20th and 21st century: colonialism, decolonisation, socialism vs. capitalism and the Cold War, the rise and fall of trade unionism, race relations, poverty and development, Black Power, African-Indian relations, the nature of political power

He overcame the disadvantages of his poor village background, faced his personal fears, and took strong stands on these major issues for his whole life, ready to pay the price when necessary.

His personal story is important for the world.

In Episodes 2 and 3, we spoke about his background in the poor, agricultural village of St. Julien in Trinidad, his going to London to become a lawyer and his subsequent acting career in major films and television in the 1950s and 1960s, and how he gave up his Commonwealth scholarship in Law to dive into politics for the first time, in a radical new party that was challenging the neo-colonial status quo that was emerging in Trinidad and Tobago just three years after Independence from Britain.

We re-join the interview when Panday takes the stage in a small village meeting in Trinidad with the world renowned intellectual and writer, CLR James, his first unsuccessful stint in politics, joining the radical trade union movement, and confronting neo-colonialism, anti-unionism, and racial division in newly independent Trinidad and Tobago.