[lbo-talk] Dubya does Delhi: will the chimps make rude noises?

[Colin Brace]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,1720429,00.html

Baby Bush go home

Arundhati Roy
Wednesday March 1, 2006
The Guardian

On his triumphalist tour of this part of the world, where he hopes to
wave imperiously at people he considers potential subjects, President
Bush's itinerary is getting curiouser and curiouser. For his March 2
pit stop in New Delhi, the Indian government tried very hard to have
him address our Parliament. A not inconsequential number of MPs
threatened to heckle him, so Plan One was hastily shelved. Plan Two
was that he address the masses from the ramparts of the magnificent
Red Fort where the Indian prime minister traditionally delivers his
Independence Day address. But the Red Fort, surrounded as it is by the
predominantly Muslim population of Old Delhi, was considered a
security nightmare. So now we're into Plan Three: President George
Bush speaks from Purana Qila, the Old Fort.

Ironic, isn't it, that the only safe public space for a man who has
recently been so enthusiastic about India's modernity should be a
crumbling medieval fort?

Since the Purana Qila also houses the Delhi zoo - George Bush's
audience will be a few hundred caged animals and an approved list of
caged human beings who in India go under the category of "eminent
persons". They're mostly rich folk who live in our poor country like
captive animals, incarcerated by their own wealth, locked and barred
in their gilded cages, protecting themselves from the threat of the
vulgar and unruly multitudes whom they have systematically
dispossessed over the centuries.

So what's going to happen to George W Bush? Will the gorillas cheer
him on? Will the gibbons curl their lips? Will the brow-antlered deer
sneer? Will the chimps make rude noises? Will the owls hoot? Will the
lions yawn and the giraffes bat their beautiful eyelashes? Will the
crocs recognise a kindred soul? Will the quails give thanks that Bush
isn't travelling with Dick Cheney, his hunting partner with the
notoriously bad aim? Will the CEOs agree?

Oh, and on March 2 Bush will be taken to visit Gandhi's memorial in
Rajghat. He's by no means the only war criminal who has been invited
by the Indian government to lay flowers at Rajghat. (Only recently we
had the Burmese dictator General Than Shwe, no shrinking violet
himself.) But when George Bush places flowers on that famous slab of
highly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince. It will be as
though he has poured a pint of blood on the memory of Gandhi.

We really would prefer that he didn't.

It is not in our power stop Bush's visit. It is in our power to
protest it, and we will. The government, the police and the corporate
press will do everything they can to minimise the extent of our
outrage. Nothing the Happy-news Papers say can change the fact that
all over India, from the biggest cities to the smallest villages, in
public places and private homes, George W Bush, incumbent president of
the United States of America, world nightmare incarnate, is just not
welcome.

--
  Colin Brace
  Amsterdam