Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A Chance for World Peace?

One month short of the seventy-second anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, one hundred and twenty-two countries met and voted to ban nuclear weapons. The one hundred and twenty-two countries did not include those who hold nuclear weapons, nor the only country to ever experience their use, Japan.

At the 72-year mark, it may be important to remember what happened in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. At 8:14 that morning, as commuters headed to work and school-children into school, an atomic bomb was dropped on central Hiroshima.

“Suddenly--the time is approximately 8:14--the whole valley is filled by a garish light which resembles the magnesium light used in photography, and I am conscious of a wave of heat. I jump to the window to find out the cause of this remarkable phenomenon, but I see nothing more than that brilliant yellow light.” (Father John Siemes)

“Suddenly, a strong flash of light startled me - and then another. So well does one recall little things that I remember vividly how a stone lantern in the garden became brilliantly lit and I debated whether this light was caused by a magnesium flare or sparks from a passing trolley.

Garden shadows disappeared. The view where a moment before had been so bright and sunny was now dark and hazy. Through swirling dust I could barely discern a wooden column that had supported one comer of my house. It was leaning crazily and the roof sagged dangerously.Moving instinctively, I tried to escape, but rubble and fallen timbers barred the way. By picking my way cautiously I managed to reach the roka [an outside hallway] and stepped down into my garden. A profound weakness overcame me, so I stopped to regain my strength. To my surprise I discovered that I was completely naked How odd! Where were my drawers and undershirt?” (Dr. Michihiko Hachiya)

“Well, it was like a white magnesium flash. I lost consciousness right after or almost at the same time I saw the flash. When I regained consciousness, I found myself in the dark. I heard my friends, Ms. Asami, crying for her mother. Soon after, I found out that we actually had been attacked. Afraid of being caught by a fire, I told Ms. Asami to run out of the building. Ms. Asami, however, just told me to leave her and to try to escape by myself because she thought that she couldn't make it anywhere. She said she couldn't move. I said to her that I couldn't leave her, but she said that she couldn't even stand up. While we were talking, the sky started to grow lighter. Then, I heard water running in the lavatory. Apparently the water pipes had exploded. So I drew water with my helmet to pour over Ms. Asami's head again and again. She finally regained consciousness fully and went out of the building with me. We first thought to escape to the parade grounds, but we couldn't because there was a huge sheet of fire in front of us. So instead, we squatted down in the street next to a big water pool for fighting fires, which was about the size of this table. Since Hiroshima was completely enveloped in flames, we felt terribly hot and could not breathe well at all. After a while, a whirlpool of fire approached us from the south. It was like a big tornado of fire spreading over the full width of the street. Whenever the fire touched, wherever the fire touched, it burned. It burned my ear and leg, I didn't realize that I had burned myself at that moment, but I noticed it later.…

The whirlpool of fire that was covering the entire street approached us from Ote-machi. So, everyone just tried so hard to keep away from the fire. It was just like a living hell. After a while, it began to rain. The fire and the smoke made us so thirsty and there was nothing to drink, no water, and the smoke even disturbed our eyes. As it began to rain, people opened their mouths and turned their faces towards the sky and try to drink the rain, but it wasn't easy to catch the rain drops in our mouths. It was a black rain with big drops....

They were so big that we even felt pain when they dropped onto us. We opened our mouths just like this, as wide as possible in an effort to quench our thirst. Everybody did the same thing. But it just wasn't enough. Someone, someone found an empty can and held it to catch the rain.…

No, no it didn't. Maybe I didn't catch enough rain, but I still felt very thirsty and there was nothing I could do about it. What I felt at that moment was that Hiroshima was entirely covered with only three colors. I remember red, black and brown, but, but, nothing else. Many people on the street were killed almost instantly. The fingertips of those dead bodies caught fire and the fire gradually spread over their entire bodies from their fingers. A light gray liquid dripped down their hands, scorching their fingers. I, I was so shocked to know that fingers and bodies could be burned and deformed like that. I just couldn't believe it. It was horrible. And looking at it, it was more than painful for me to think how the fingers were burned, hands and fingers that would hold babies or turn pages, they just, they just burned away. For a few years after the A-bomb was dropped, I was terribly afraid of fire. I wasn't even able to get close to fire because all my senses remembered how fearful and horrible the fire was, how hot the blaze was, and how hard it was to breathe the hot air. It was really hard to breathe. Maybe because the fire burned all the oxygen, I don't know. I could not open my eyes enough because of the smoke, which was everywhere. Not only me but everyone felt the same. And my parts were covered with holes.” (Akiko Takakura)

“The citizens of Hiroshima will never be able to forget August 6, 1945. On that morning, exactly two years ago today, the first atomic bomb to be unleashed on a city in the history of mankind fell on Hiroshima; it instantly reduced the city to ashes and claimed the precious lives of more than 100,000 of our fellow citizens. Hiroshima turned into a city of death and darkness. Yet as some slight consolation for this horror, the dropping of the atomic bomb became a factor in ending the war and calling a halt to the fighting. In this sense, mankind must remember that August 6 was a day that brought a chance for world peace. This is the reason why we are now commemorating that day by solemnly inaugurating a festival of peace, despite the limitless sorrow in our minds. For only those who most bitterly experienced and came to know most completely the misery and the guilt of war can utterly reject war as the most terrible kind of human suffering, and ardently pursue peace.” (Shinzo Hamai, Peace Declaration 1947) (Emphasis added)

The impact of the bombs was immediately destructive but the injuries and radiation sickness they left behind ruined the health and well-being of more than one generation. There are places we visit to remember our best moments as a species and there are places that are reminders of the worst we have been. Hiroshima and Nagasaki should belong to the latter.

The seven decades since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been three parallel movements. First, several nuclear arms races—between pairs or groups of states that have nuclear weapons, are trying to build them or are trying to stop each other from getting them—have shaped international relations globally and regionally. Second, the idea that nuclear energy has peaceful applications and offers a clean, safe and cost-effective solution to the world’s growing energy hunger took off in the 1950s and 1960s and still influences government policies around the world. This idea has been shaken by human acts of omission (Chernobyl and the Rajasthan Power Plant) and the catastrophic impact of disasters (Fukushima, raising questions about Koodankulam). Third, anti-nuclear struggles persist around the world, like voices in the wildnerness but also like stubborn weeds that resist destruction.

Women have played an important part in anti-nuclear struggles everywhere.  The women hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been advocates, raising awareness around the world of the impact on health and life of atomic weapons. The women’s peace camp at Greenham Common stayed put from 1982 to 2000, to protest a US missile base in rural England, raising questions about the legitimacy of both the base and of nuclear weapons. The women of Jaitapur and Idinthakarai are raising questions about safety, environmental and health impact of the nuclear installations in their neighbourhood. These are just three examples from around the world. But despite this, and despite the growing numbers of women nuclear physicists, there are very few of them at policy tables  (also, this)—and there is no reason to expect that women physicists will have different views on weaponisation or even the efficacy of nuclear energy, but the fact that the physical and social impact of nuclear weapons or even accidents are gendered should make diversity imperative.

Women too, fight shy of learning to engage with technical discussions—an ingrained patriarchal notion of both capability and interest that is taught at home and in school. This week, marking the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, may be a good time to commit to gender inclusivity in the nuclear debate:

• Do we understand the gendered consequences of our choices?

• Are we inclusive in whose accounts we read?

• Whose voices do we consider authoritative?

• What do we know about the century-old legacy of women’s peace and anti-nuclear work?

• What do women know (bother to/ have the chance to learn) about nuclear energy, nuclear policy and nuclear weapons?

• How do we build capacity among women professionals to engage with these issues?

• How do we ensure women’s inclusion in policy discussions on matters nuclear? 

The challenge is that we are forgetting. Seventy years is a very long time, and even the memories of Chernobyl and Fukushima now seem distant, as new topics and controversies claim our attention everyday. As we clamour for uninterrupted power supply, it is easy to forget that we never quite settled the debates over nuclear energy and never adequately supported research into alternatives—indeed, by voting with our consumption habits, we are now pronouncing our verdict.

And yet, when the world votes to ban nuclear weapons, and there are prominent absences and abstentions, it seems we are still standing where we were seventy-odd years ago, and the promise of world peace, optimistically held out by the Mayor of Hiroshima in 1947, has not come to fruition. 

Book Review: Women and militarism in Pakistan

Reviewer’s revelation: I have known the author of this book for over two decades.

I bought my friend Aneela Zeb Babar’s book We Are All Revolutionaries Here as soon as I heard about it—one of the first copies SAGE sold, I think?!—because I know Aneela is a very lively writer and an insightful observer of the everyday realities that make up a social moment. Now, I often buy books enthusiastically and then they sit on my bookshelf for years, waiting for that project which would call for them. Aneela’s, I actually have read right through!

The rate of growth of new subfields in security studies is directly related to government investment in their propagation. A couple of years ago, there was a conference in Washington DC on ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ or CVE. In two year, investment in conferences and research projects has grown apace to generate a minor library of studies that largely recycle the same information—a portion of government perspective, a portion of UN/INGO values, a little nod to empiricism and recommendations, directed at anyone who will listen. I know this because I have had my moment with this, having researched and written a short background note on women and CVE last year.

Into this discursive moment, enters Aneela’s book, a compilation of work done meticulously over a decade or longer, reminding us of the kind of research that actually builds knowledge.

What is this book about? Aneela writes about one of the most-discussed puzzles of our time—what draws people towards worldviews that seem extremely radical and even irrational to others of us? She approaches this question with an open mind and heart, and writes with an honesty that allows us to walk with her. We are in those classrooms and living rooms and offices and discussion groups that she attends, hearing people speaking about what faith has come to mean for them and how it enjoins them to live—not as diktat but as choice. The researcher listens with empathy and writes critically.

One of the charming features of Aneela’s writing is that she blends the personal with the external narrative allowing us to understand her location and her baggage.

The first chapter is about madrassahs and the new hybrid seminaries. Outside Pakistan, we get to read about madrassahs but how many of us know about these new institutions that anchor contemporary curricula in religious education? Graduates enter a variety of professions but share “religious values and a network of contacts” (page 34). These networks are emerging as significant and Aneela suggests are an end in themselves. But students grow up with religious—essentially, status quo—values so deeply ingrained that this schooling deprives “their students of the will to change or challenge all that is flawed in Pakistani society.” There is no reinterpretation or will to resist the challenges that face state and society. Rather than engage with these challenges, young people are choosing to express their values through consumerism of a particular sort.

Aneela’s second and third chapters describes a world many of us will never enter—the world of expatriate Pakistani women and their rediscovery of faith and a faith-based identity. She writes specifically of women she has interviewed in Canberra and the influence of Farhat Hashmi’s Al Huda, an organisation that offers religious lectures and seminars for women. In this world view, the “intrusion of women into the public sphere defined as the ‘men’s area of control’ is seen as leading to the disruption, if not the destruction, of the fundamental order of things” (page 53). Dress, and veiling, are of importance to this discussion. The chapter allows us to hear how women see their own journeys to faith and why this leads them to make the choices they do. More than anything, it takes that amorphous image of veiled, devout women in a mass and turns them into individuals who, we learn, have thoughtfully made choices. Aneela closes her second chapter by pointing out that before the Intefada, few Pakistani women wore the veil but that they now do, may ironically signal that women are part of public life (page 74).

The third chapter, which describes Al Huda’s apparoach and work, is also interesting for what it shows you about gender and class relations in Pakistani society. Drawing women away from frivolous pastimes into religious education and then social service (page 88) without upsetting the patriarchal applecart (page 90), is what Al Huda sets out to do. What sort of social service is not discussed here but it is safe to assume it would not be a social change agenda that disrupts traditional equations.

With the madrassas and hybrid schools as well as Al Huda, Aneela points out that there is a homogenizing drive—a simplification of interpretation, an erasure of ethnic, linguistic and maybe theological difference. In her style, she then draws the narrative to herself and underscores what is lost when such essentialism takes over. What she writes about Islam in Pakistan is also true of other faiths in other places.

In ‘Texts of War,’ Aneela shows us that when militarism is deeply entrenched in a society, carrying guns is a common dream among young women as well as men. This chapter literally wanders through the rooms of this reality—with a literature review on the role of the military, its relationship with religion, women in the military and media representations thereof and the mirror image of all this in a society where girls and boys receive a religious education. Where does Pakistan’s only female Prime Minister fit into this picture? “Yes, we did salute her but you have to understand that the elation was not there in the heart of the soldier,” an officer told Aneela (page 122). Interviews with teenagers conducted in 1999 form a part of this chapter.

Ten years ago, almost to the date, the Pakistani army laid siege to Lal Masjid, which along with the attached Jamia Hafsa madrassa had come under the sway of a pair of militant brothers. In that siege, 154 were killed.  Aneela uses eyewitness and first-person accounts to narrate what happened from the perspective of those within the walls of the complex, many of them young girls. In fact, the chapter is largely made up of the translation of one such account by Umme Hassan. The polemics of this account showed that the young women had thought about issues beyond defending the mosque but they were not, Aneela tells us, feminist because they continued to reinforce “traditional, static and unchanging articulations of Muslim women” (page 167).

This book allows us to peer over a neighbourly wall and to eavesdrop on conversations that women are having about life, world and faith, and inevitably, politics. We get to meet the women that do not attend Southasian track two programmes or seminars and we are privy to their journeys. Aneela tells us that we will see a “more firebrand generation of young women” (page 170). When we do, this book will remind us of the influences that shaped them and our time.

Coming back then to this idea of ‘extremism,’ what this book allows you to see is that there is nothing really extreme about it when you are inside that society, on your journey. It is your evolution, seeking answers for your life and following those answers logically. To understand is to justify, and that is one reason to other that which threatens what we hold dear, but without understanding and empathy, can we resolve? Will there be a solution to the violence of this historical moment that is not rooted in understanding and empathy—that you feel as you do because of where you come from and what you have been through, and what you believe is what allows you to make sense of your life? I don’t know. But reading Aneela’s book allowed me to look long and hard and try to learn something about a world that is just outside the limits of mine, but finding its way into my backyard as well.

My big complaint with this book is that it could have been better edited. It is the writer’s prerogative to spill words on a page and the editor’s job to clean, sort and craft them into a higher form of her art. The result is an absorbing text that is sometimes stream-of-consciousness—you get the gist but cannot find the point—or a structure you can recapitulate or argument you can summarise. For a work that is so unusual and important, the apparent absence of editorial engagement is a big setback.   

You can read this book for many reasons. You can read it to learn about what women’s lives are really like in Pakistan and what ideas about masculinity and femininity are now circulating. You can read it for the insights it offers into “radicalisation” and extremism, especially how the state becomes complicit in this process. You can read it for the many stories and anecdotes it is built around, which allow you to visit Pakistan in a way that other academic writing will not. You can read it for the meticulous research that is reported (like translations of original literature, for instance). You can read it because it’s a really good example of feminist scholarship and writing—in its approach, its transparency. But really, if you pretend to have an interest in gender, Pakistan (or Southasia) extremism or social change, you should read this book.

PS: Aneela, please review my review kindly!

Wanted: A Council of Ministers with gender parity

Beyond the afterglow of an election well-organized, in a very large democratic country there are few opportunities for lesser mortals working outside the capital to make their wishes known. I've felt very strongly that I haven't made a serious enough effort to work on this issue. I've let myself feel isolated and alone. After all, what I can achieve alone in Chennai that the power feminist NGOs of Delhi haven't done? 

This afternoon, on an impulse, and urged by a friend, I impulsively created a petition addressed to Narendra Modi asking that he appoint women to half the posts in his Council of Ministers.  As I posted on Facebook:

"Sometimes I really want to do something, and I ask too many people for advice, and finally, I don't do it. Either their misgivings kill my enthusiasm or they make it all too hard to do. Today, I just did something on impulse. I started a petition to demand 50% representation for women in the new Council of Ministers. Me. Just me. Not Prajnya. Not all feminists of India. Me, just by myself, as a citizen. I must say, it feels good and could turn out to be addictive."

It's a simple petition:

Democracy without equality is flawed. Equal representation for all groups is essential and gender parity in your Council of Ministers is an easy first step. This means:

1. Women should make up 50 percent of the members of your Council of Ministers, at every rank. 

1. This means, if you end up with 30 ministers in all (Cabinet, Deputy and MOS), we want to see 50% women in each rank. 
2. 
   
3. Women should be allocated portfolios with no gender stereotyping. 

1. This means, we want to see women in charge of ministries like Defence, External Affairs, Internal Security and Finance, as well. 

Exclude outright those charge-sheeted with sexual and gender-based violence. A related sign of your commitment to gender justice would be to explicitly exclude anyone charged with speaking or behaving in a manner that hurts women and other gender and sexual minorities. 

"Experience" and "competence" are excuses that apply only to the appointment of women. Be as decisive as Indian voters have been, in dismissing those excuses and identifying women to appoint. 

Demonstrate to us that you are committed to equality by appointing a Council of Ministers where there is equal gender representation.

Thanks to like-minded friends, the petition is almost at 60 likes. It needs a hundred to be taken to him. 

All day I have been engaged with people on Twitter and Facebook about this. On Facebook, it's been mostly support; they think like me so they're my friends, maybe?

On Twitter, people have read this as a call for reservations and I have ended up engaging in a number of conversations, that I would like to bring together here in the form of my answers to frequently asked questions:

1. I don't believe in reservations as a permanent solution.
My reply:
a. I am not asking for reservation in this petition. I am just ask Narendra Modi to decide to appoint 50% women.
b. I agree that reservations should not seem like a permanent solution. They are a temporary measure and should be designed as such, along with the structural measures that will make them redundant. But they are a necessary temporary measure in the short-term and intermediate-term to level the playing field in many contexts.

2. I believe in quality or merit.
My reply: So do I, but consider that if quality or merit (defined as education, experience or competence) were a factor in selecting men for the same jobs, the posts would likely go unfilled. It is the nature of democratic politics that experts don't enter politics, and you don't want a Minister to be an expert in one field but able to think from multiple perspectives and imagine solutions that take many things into account.
My question: Why is the question of merit raised only in the context of any kind of affirmative action (statutory or not) or quota?

3. Women do not need help. If you believe in their competence, you must believe it will simply rise and shine.
My reply: Women need help at this moment because even if they are competent, they are invisible. We have learned not to see them even when they are there. A petition like this will at least get all of us asking about the women who have now entered Parliament: Who is this? What has she done? What is she like? She will not be a nameless, faceless member of a 62-person group.
However competent, you cannot hire a person you have learned not to see.
@Septisme suggest gender-blind, merit-based auditions for ministries. I'd go along with that if all women MPs would surely be seriously considered.

I want to thank @Septisme and @StrangelyYours for their serious engagement with this issue this afternoon.

I also read @EchoofIndia's tweets asking if this could be a serious petition given there were so few women in the new Lok Sabha. I think it's a fair question. Of course, this is an impulsive petition and not a long-term plan for social change. But the point of the petition is partly to convey this concern to those who will decide, and partly to get this conversation going among us.

Can we start by answering the question that @manekshaws posed: "Name 10 honest competent women"? Are there ten such women? Of course. Have we bothered to find out who they are? Maybe, maybe not. Professor Kannamma Raman of Bombay University has been studying them for ages, so she knew off-hand, but like most people, I would need to research this more.

So to pre-empt this response to my petition, "There are no women or else we would have definitely appointed more of them," with Professor Raman's guidance and the list generated by PRS Legislative and with the BJP's own website, I drew up this list of women ministers and suggested portfolios for each of them, based on their profession, education and age:

Name	Age	Education	Profession	Possible ministry
Jyoti Dhurve	47	PG	Agriculture/Horticulture	Chemicals and Fertilizers
Savitri Thakur	35		Agriculture/Horticulture	Agriculture
Riti Pathak	36	PG	Agriculture/Horticulture	Water Resources
Khadse Raksha Nikhil	26	Grad	Agriculture/Horticulture	Youth Affairs and Sports
Neelam Sonkar	38	PG	Agriculture/Horticulture	Earth Sciences
Anju Bala	34	Grad	Agriculture/Horticulture	Drinking water supply and sanitation
Deol Hema Malini Dharmendra	65	PhD	Artist	Culture
Smt. Kirron Kher	61	PG	Artist	Tourism
Maadam Poonamben Hematbhai	39	Grad	Business	Commerce and Industry
Jardosh Darshnaben Vikrambhai	NA	Grad	Business	Consumer Affairs
Poonam Mahajan Alias Poonam Vajendla Rao	33	others	Business	Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises
Santosh Ahlawat	57	PG	Business	Labour and Employment
Krishna Raj	47	PG	Business	Steel
Smt. Meenakshi Lekhi	46	Grad	Lawyer	Law
Shyal Bhartiben Dhirubhai	50	Grad	Medical Practioner	Health
anoDr.Gavit Heena Vaijaykumar	26	Grad	Medical Practioner	Panchayati Raj
Priyanka Singh Rawat	28	PG	Other	Science and Technology
Rekha Verma	32		Other	Food processing industries
Sadhavi Niranjan Jyoti	47	Plus 2	Other	Parliamentary Affairs
Smt. Bijoya Chakraborty	75	PG	Political or/and Social Service	Urban Development
Rama Devi	65	PG	Political or/and Social Service	Power
Patel Jayshreeben Kanubhai	55		Political or/and Social Service	Family Welfare
Shobha Karandlaje	47	PG	Political or/and Social Service	Social justice and empowerment
Sumitra Mahajan	70	PG	Political or/and Social Service	Speaker/ Human Resource Development
Sushma Swaraj	62	Grad	Political or/and Social Service	External Affairs
Savitri Bai Phule	33	Grad	Political or/and Social Service	Railways
Uma Bharti	55		Political or/and Social Service	Textiles
Maneka Sanjay Gandhi	57	Plus 2	Political or/and Social Service	Home
Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah	64	Plus 2	Political or/and Social Service	Environment and Forests
Kamla Patle	48	Grad	Social work	Rural Development

The Rajya Sabha list, information sourced from the Rajya Sabha site:

Heptulla, Dr. Najma A.	74	Ph.D. Cardiac Anatomy, MSc Zoology; Politician	Health/ Women and Child Development/ Home
Irani, Smt. Smriti Zubin	38	BA, Actor	I&B
Rai, Smt. Kusum	46	Intermediate, Social Worker	Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation
Sood, Smt. Bimla Kashyap	52	BA, Social Worker.	Statistics and Programme Implementation

Of course, these allocations are open to debate. But that is the point of this list, this blogpost and this petition: To get us started seriously thinking about appointing and expecting to see women in important positions--regardless of whether they are already famous or not.

Another friend, @Raja_Sw, suggested on Twitter:

"In the interest of women empowerment, how abt Modi first tries to fill each Cabinet spot with a woman? If none available, open it to men."Surely there are plenty of competent, ambitious women who could hold a Cabinet portfolio? Time for them to be visible, stake their claim."

Surely, there are. It's also up to us to learn to look for them and spot them, because we teach them as children how to be self-effacing and as adolescents, how to second-guess themselves.

Maybe Mr. Modi will take a second to think about this petition, maybe he won't. But I am doing what I can and am happy and proud that I haven't given up without trying this time. And if we can have lots of these conversations along the way, I will have made a small contribution to getting equal representation for women and others in the Indian executive.