From: "Salil Tripathi" <salil61-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: arundhati roy in the guardian
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 22:21:54 +0000


No Margaret, I'm afraid Malini is right. The issue is of intention. Did 
Union Carbide intend to kill the people who lived around its plant in 
Bhopal? No. Did the extremists who hijacked the plane and crashed it into 
the WTC intend to kill civilians? Yes. And who valued the lives of Indians 
as cheaper? Was it the pesticide expert you cite alone, or also the Indian 
Government, which filed a brief before Judge Keenan, and argued that the 
case against UCC must be heard in an Indian court, which was competent to 
handle the case? It was the persuasive argument of India's lawyer, Nani 
Palkhivala, ex-Indian ambassador to the US, which Keenan cited, when it 
supported UCC's claim of forum non conveniens. Some employee of UCC may feel 
that the economic value of the life of a poor Indian is less than that of an 
American in the US. But that doesn't mean that UCC wants to kill those 
people. In contrast, irrespective of calculations made by the hijackers, 
their intent was to kill civilians.

That distinction is at the heart of this issue, which Ms. Roy skilfully 
chooses to ignore. Since Ms. Roy feels free to speculate motives of 
everyone, from Bush, bin Laden to multinationals' executives, let me 
speculate her motives: to remain at the forefront of one of the hottest 
issues, viz. globalization. A great contemporary Gujarati poet, Sitanshu 
Yashaschandra, had said once: "Aag lage tyaare kuvo khodvanu kam kavi nu 
nathi", meaning, when there's a fire, it is not the job of a poet to start 
digging a well. His point was that writers do not have to respond to a 
crisis. (He said this in response to a question put to him at a reading -- I 
add this lest it is taken literally, that it is not the job of a poet to 
provide succour, but perhaps to fan flames! Yashaschandra didn't mean that. 
I know; I was present at the reading where he made these remarks and know 
the context).

Salil


>From: Margaret Trawick <trawick-AT-clear.net.nz>
>Reply-To: postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>To: postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Re: arundhati roy in the guardian
>Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 09:47:42 +1200
>
>Malini - United States law differentiates between criminal negligence and
>premeditated murder, and regards the latter as more heinous than the 
>former.
>But this is just United States law.  I can imagine other points of view.
>
>The mass slaughter that happened at the WTC has been called horrifying
>because of the perpetrators' (apparent) "callous disregard for human life,"
>or some such.
>
>I would guess, however, that the people who planned and executed the
>destruction of the WTC were very mindful of the high value of (American)
>human lives to Americans, and that is exactly why they intentionally
>destroyed so many lives.
>
>Shortly after the Union Carbide disaster, I had a conversation with a
>pesticide expert, who probably had some connections with Union Carbide.  He
>argued that the Government of India was demanding too much money from Union
>Carbide to compensate the victims and the families of victims of the
>chemical spill, because, as he put it, "those people's lives were not worth
>ten dollars each."  What I think he meant was that the victims were so poor
>that their deaths did not result in a significant (from an American point 
>of
>view) loss of income to their families.
>
>This man displayed what I would call a callous disregard for human life.  I
>would not call him, or the head of Union Carbide, reasonable in any but the
>narrowest of senses.  Union Carbide follows the dictates of capitalism.  
>The
>Taliban follows some other dictates.  Both sets of rules not only permit 
>but
>mandate the destruction of human life.  So, is one more reasonable than the
>other?  I don't know.  But I do think that Union Carbide and the Taliban 
>are
>comparable in many ways.
>
>MT
>
>
>
> > While I liked a lot of Arundhati Roy's article, I also found it 
>disturbing
> > in many ways. Can we really compare the head of Union Carbide to the
> > Taliban even though the former caused the death of so many? (and I do
>think
> > the Union Carbide survivors got a horrible deal) Is intentionality not 
>an
> > issue at all? And how can we call the Taliban reasonable? Are public
> > executions in football stadiums reasonable?
> > Malini
>
>
>
>
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