Wednesday, February 26, 2003, 7:00pm, Institute of African-American Affairs and Africana Studies, 269 Mercer Street, Suite 601, New York

On February 28, 2002, remarkably organized mobs of Hindu nationals unleashed spectacular, indiscriminate violence on Muslim citizens of the Indian state of Gujarat. In the wake of the carnage, hundreds of Muslim homes and businesses were torched and destroyed, and some two thousand residents estimated murdered. Interpreted by many as a modern-day pogrom, the violence in Gujarat has driven over one hundred and fifty thousand Muslims from their homes and into refugee camps. All this has unfolded absent substantial corrective state intervention and, some argue, with active state collusion. The Indian intellectual and novelist, Arundhati Roy, has suggested that the actions of Spring 2002 are clear signs of a "creeping fascism" in India characterized by the "steady infiltration of all instruments of state power…the slow erosion of civil liberties…and [routine] day to day injustices." A recent report that reveals disturbing links between US corporate interests in India and Hindu nationalist violence further complicates matters. Please join us as informed panelists consider the complex connections obtaining between the state, ‘communal violence,´ and global capitalism.

Speakers Include:

Ali Mir, Associate Professor of Management, William Patterson University
Rupal Oza, Assistant Professor of Asian-American and Women´s Studies, Hunter College
Smita Narula, Senior Researcher, Human Rights Watch- Asia Division
Arvind Rajagopal, Associate Professor of Media Ecology, NYU