at a conference in the United States, one year after 9-11, she gives an informative, deeply resounding speech on the current state of global affairs, particularly in relation to U.S. belligerent foreign policies:
(excerpts follow)
It is dangerous to cede to the Indian government, or the American government, or anyone for that matter the right to define what India, or America are, or ought to be.
To call someone anti-American, indeed, to be anti-American, or for that matter, anti-Indian or anti-Timbuktu, is not just racist, it is a failure of the imagination, an inability to see the world in terms other than those the establishment has set out for you. If you’re not a Bushy, you’re a Taliban. If you don’t love us, you hate us. If you’re not good, you’re evil. If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.
Now that the initial aim of the war, capturing Osama Bin Laden dead or alive, seems to have run into bad weather, the goalposts have been moved. Its being made out the whole point of the war [in Afghanistan] was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas. We are being asked to believe that the U.S. marines are actually on a feminist mission. [Laughter and much clapping]
If so, will their next stop be America’s military ally, Saudi Arabia? Think of it this way, in India there are some pretty reprehensible social practices against untouchables, against Christians and Muslims, against women. Pakistan and Bangladesh have even worst ways of dealing with minority communities and women. Should they be bombed? Should Delhi and Islamabad and Dhaka be destroyed? Is it possible to bomb bigotry out of India? Can we bomb our way to a feminist paradise? Is that how women won the vote in the U.S? Or how slavery was abolished? Can we win redress for the genocide of the millions of Native Americans upon whose corpses the United States was founded by bombing Santa Fe?
None of us need anniversaries to remind us of what we cannot forget.
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