Verses 19:17-35:

And once remote from them, she hid behind a screen. Then we sent to her our spirit, who took the shape of a well-formed man.
She said, “I take refuge in the All-Merciful from you, if you are pious.”
He said, “I am but an angel of your lord, come to bestow on you a son without blemish.”
She said, “Will I have a son, when no mortal has touched me, and I was not rebellious?”
He said, “So it is.” He said, “Your Lord says, it is easy for me. We will make him a sign for the people and a mercy from us. The matter has already been decreed.”
So she bore him, and withdrew with him to a remote place.
And the pangs of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, “I wish I had died before now, and had been forgotten in oblivion.”
But he called to her from beneath her, saying, “Do not be sad. For your Lord has made a stream run beneath you.”
So shake the trunk of the palm tree toward you, and ripe, fresh dates will fall to you. So eat and drink and be comforted. If you see any human being, say, “I have taken a vow to the All-Merciful to fast, and will speak to no one today.”

Many of these details are from material circulating in the late antique Christian community that also reached the Prophet Muhammad. In the Qur’an Jesus is depicted as in a line of God’s prophets, including Moses, Solomon, David, and others, a line that went on to include the Prophet Muhammad as of the early 600s CE.

The tradition of Persian and Mughal miniature painting — of painting leaves intended to go into manuscript books for the libraries of kings or very wealthy notables — flowered in the 1200s and after, in Iran, Central Asia, India and what is now Turkey. It was influenced by Chinese techniques that came in through the Mongol conquests and the Silk Road and sometimes the people depicted look a little Chinese.

In 1519-1687, the Qutb-Shahi dynasty ruled the Kingdom of Golconda, named after their initial capital, a city near Hyderabad in South India. From 1591 Hyderabad itself became the capital. That city today is the capital of Telengana State and is the fourth-most-populous city in the Indian Republic. The dynasty was founded by an adventurer from Hamadan in Iran, who was a Shiite, and so the kingdom had Shiism for its state religion, even though most of its subjects were Hindus and most of its Muslim subjects were Sunnis. In its later decades it became a vassal of the Mughals based up north, and ultimately was absorbed into the Mughal Empire.

During the 1600s in particular there was a lot of contact with European maritime empires and merchants, who brought books and paintings from Europe, and so the Renaissance tradition of depicting the Nativity had an impact on court artists. But these paintings were commissioned by Muslim rulers for Muslim court purposes, as their own celebration of Jesus, whom they considered, as did all Muslims, one of their prophets.

The National Museum of Asian Art at the Smithsonian has a spectacular miniature painting from Golconda, dated to about 1630, of the adoration of the baby Jesus.



Jesus and Mary are both shown with golden halos. Joseph is also there but without a halo.

One of the adorers is, (extremely) anachronistically, a 17th-century European merchant in boots, almost certainly Dutch. He also seems to have brought gold vessels, and he has in his hand what looks to me like fine cloth, dyed purple. Indigo dye was one of India’s trading major commodities. More on all that later.

There are three winged angels, two hovering above and one on the ground in front of the manger. One of the angels above is holding what looks to me like a crown. Since the Muslim tradition doesn’t know about the Gospel language regarding the messiah being the king of the Jews, my guess is that this motif was borrowed from a European artist. Also, gold was one of the gifts traditionally thought by Christians to be brought to the Christ child by one of the 3 magi.

The other angel has a bow. In South India, the crown and the bow were royal symbols. So I think the angels are depicted as exalting Jesus in the way royalty was exalted. These symbols raise the possibility that the royal treatment given here to baby Jesus is not Christian in origin but Hindu Indian. After all, the beloved god Ram was a king. For these Indian artists, who did not know the Bible, the symbols may not be an assertion that he was royalty, only that he deserved the sort of glorification that kings received.

Although in the West of the Muslim world Arab artists were reluctant to depict holy figures, this Indian artist has no problem with it. Most did not, and they painted Muhammad, as well. Mary is shown wearing hijab but with her face visible, and Joseph and Jesus also have their faces depicted.

Shiite Islam puts special emphasis on piety centering on the family of the Prophet, including Muhammad’s son-in-law and first cousin, Ali, Muhammad’s daughter Fatimah, and the two sons of Ali and Fatimah, Hasan and Husayn. Although Sunni courts also produced nativity paintings, it could be that this form of Christian piety especially appealed to the Shiite rulers of Golconda.



As for the Dutch merchant or factor, Sanu Kainikara explains,

“In 1627, the Dutch had a disagreement with the Governor of Golconda, under whose jurisdiction the region fell, regarding the grant of a ‘farming’ permit for Masulipatam (Macchilipatanam). They withdrew to Pulicat and blockaded Masulipatam from the sea. The Qutb Shah dismissed his governor and invited the Dutch to return to Masulipatam. The reason for the Qutb Shahi sultan’s action was that the Dutch possessed a preponderance of naval strength that was able to threaten an adversary from the sea without exposing themselves to any significant danger—a capability that no other European power in India could lay claim to at that time.”

“The Dutch trade from Masulipatam amounted to Rupees 600,000 per year throughout most of the 17th century. In 1660, the Dutch opened a factory in Golconda, whose chief merchant also doubled as the ambassador to the Qutb Shahi king.”

One of the key commodities traded from Golconda to the Netherlands and later to Britain was diamonds.


Map of Hyderabad state, c. 1730, H/t Wikipedia, UM Clement Library .

So that Dutch merchant was almost certainly in Hyderabad seeking diamonds. But maybe also indigo dye and textiles, which he is shown in turn offering to baby Jesus.

And the court painter, having been commissioned by the king to do a nativity scene, obligingly incorporated the trader into the painting, a common practice. It is unlikely that the painting was commissioned by the foreigner– it stayed in India until a British officer purchased it. It just shows that the Prophet Jesus (`Isa in Arabic) had acquired another connotation in the Renaissance period, being associated with the expanding maritime trade empires of the Christian Europeans. The Dutch had just displaced the Portuguese, who can be seen in earlier miniatures.

The painting is a reminder that Christmas is not parochial — not northern European, as it is often conceived in the US, but a global commemoration of a global event. Not only do Muslims celebrate Jesus as a holy figure, but many Hindus also respect him (and more used to before the rise of Hindutva, Hindu nationalism). And Jews who live alongside Christians often have Christmas trees, even if they can’t go along with Christian beliefs about Jesus, who after all was born and bred a Jew. Christmas should be for celebrating rebirth and renewal and hope, in a world that desperately needs all three, for Christians and for everyone.

( Tomdispatch.com) – In 1981, India’s post office issued a stamp showing the flags of India and occupied Palestine flying side by side above the phrase “Solidarity with the Palestinian people.” That now seems like ancient history. Today, Hindu nationalists are flying the flags of India and Israel side by side as a demonstration of their support for that country’s catastrophic war on Gaza.

It’s a match made in heaven (or do we mean hell?), because the two nations have similar “problems” they’re trying to “solve.” Israel has long been engaged in the violent suppression of Palestinians whose lands they occupy (including the current devastation of Gaza, an assault that 34 U.N. experts have labeled a “genocide in the making”). Meanwhile, India’s Hindu nationalist government continues the harsh oppression of its non-Hindu minorities: Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and indigenous people.

About the time Zionist settlers were beginning their occupation of Palestine in the early 1920s, an Indian right-wing figure, V.D. Savarkar, fashioned the ideology of Hindutva (Hindu-ness). Today, right-wing Hindu nationalists employ Hindutva and physical violence to further its vision of India as a nation for Hindus and Hindus only. Similarly, Zionism views historic Palestine as a land for Jews and Jews only. These parallel visions, along with the two governments’ increasingly authoritarian tendencies and ready use of violence, have drawn them into a dark alliance the consequences of which are unpredictable.

India Makes New Friends

The Republic of India and the State of Israel were born nine months apart in 1947 and 1948, each an offspring of partition. The British-ruled Indian subcontinent was then split into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India, while Israel was carved out of a portion of the British Mandate Palestine.

Throughout the Cold War, India would be a leader of what came to be known as the nonaligned movement — formerly colonized nations that sought to develop independently of both American and Soviet influence. In the 1980s, it also became the first non-Arab nation to recognize the state of Palestine. A similar recognition of Israel didn’t come until 1992, around the time India was shifting away from its nonaligned social-democratic stance toward its current adherence to neoliberalism.

Embed from Getty Images
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (L), US President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attend the launch of the Global Biofuels Alliance at the G20 summit in New Delhi on September 9, 2023. (Photo by EVELYN HOCKSTEIN / POOL / AFP) (Photo by EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images).

In recent decades, India and Israel have established strong trading relationships, especially in the military sphere. In fact, given the massive militarization of its borders with China and Pakistan and its suppression of occupied Kashmir and its people, India has become the top importer of weapons and surveillance equipment from Israel. In 2014, the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won power and its leader, Narendra Modi, became prime minister. In the process, India and Israel grew ever closer.

By 2016, as the Washington Post reported, “after Indian commandos carried out a raid inside Pakistan-controlled Kashmir in response to an attack by militants on an Indian army post, Modi trumpeted the action, saying: ‘Earlier, we used to hear of Israel having done something like this. But the country has seen that the Indian army is no less than anyone else.’”

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Today, the Israeli weapons-robotics firm Elbit Systems has even established a drone factory in India and now has a $300 million contract to supply drones to the Indian army occupying Kashmir. Meanwhile, Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have established a mutual-admiration society, dubbed by the media of both countries the “Modi-Bibi bromance.” And New Delhi has all but abandoned the Palestinians.

Economic Alliances

When, on October 27th, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for an “immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” in Gaza, only the U.S., Israel, and a handful of small nations voted “no.” India abstained. (Apparently, the Modi-Bibi bromance wasn’t quite enough to sustain a “no” vote.) Modi, however, immediately responded to the measure’s passage by declaring his “solidarity” with Israel.

Economic, political, and diplomatic relations between New Delhi, Tel Aviv, and Washington (all nuclear powers, by the way) had been strengthening even before the current conflict. Last year, for instance, India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States formed the “I2U2 Group” to attract corporate investment for their mutual benefit. Projects now underway include “food parks across India” with “climate-smart technologies” and a “unique space-based tool for policymakers, institutions, and entrepreneurs” (whatever in — or out of — the world “food parks” and “space-based tools” might be).

Then, in September, the G-20 summit of the group of 20 major nations, meeting in New Delhi, approved an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor which, according to Voice of America, would “establish a rail and shipping network linking the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan to the Israeli port of Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea.” And guess who now operates that very port? A company led by Gautam Adani, India’s richest person and (naturally!) a Modi buddy. Foreign Policy notes, “It is also palatable for the Middle East to have India as a major energy market to diversify its exports and offset Chinese influence over critical commodities such as oil and gas.”

But not surprisingly, the war in Gaza has thrown plans for such a new Indian-oriented economic corridor through the Middle East into limbo.

High-, Medium-, and Low-Tech Warfare

Militarily, the conflicts in occupied Palestine and occupied Kashmir are both lopsided mismatches. In each, a powerful nation-state is assaulting resource-poor populations, though the scale of slaughter, displacement, immiseration, and death wrought by the Indian regime doesn’t faintly approach what’s currently being done by Israel in the Gaza Strip — at least not yet. While the cases have similarities, magnitude isn’t one of them.

In Gaza, you have the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), a massive high-tech killing machine financed in large part by the world’s richest nation, facing off against Palestinian resistance groups, including the Qassam Brigade, whose most effective weapons are homemade Yassin antitank grenades and whose defenses largely consist of a network of fortified tunnels. Instead of engaging in face-to-face subterranean combat with the Qassam fighters — something that could turn out badly indeed for the IDF — the Israelis have been carrying out an industrial-scale bombardment of densely populated areas. As of late November, the result was approximately 15,000 civilians killed (including more than 6,000 children) and the displacement of 1.6 million people, or two-thirds of Gaza’s population.

In India, the Hindu nationalists’ onslaught against non-Hindu minorities has not been carried out by the Indian Army itself, but by a paramilitary organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in partnership with the BJP. That unofficial army, founded almost a century ago and modeled on Italian fascist Benito Mussolini’s “blackshirts” and Adolph Hitler’s Nazi stormtroopers, has a membership of five to six million and holds daily meetings in more than 36,000 different locales across India. Its shock troops rarely even carry firearms; their weapons are low-tech, crude, and exceptionally cruel, and their targets are unarmed, unsuspecting civilians. They kill or maim using batons, machetes, strangulation, sulfuric acid to the face, and rape, among other horrors.

Such attacks by Hindu-nationalist gangs, different as they are from the military assault on Gaza, do have parallels in the occupied West Bank. There, Israeli settlers, some carrying government-supplied small arms, maraud through parts of that area (where they live illegally), beating, torturing, and killing Palestinians, including ethnic Bedouin families. They have expelled people from their homes, stolen their money and possessions, including livestock, and destroyed houses and schools. It is now olive harvest season and Jewish settlers have attacked Palestinians in their olive groves, sometimes forcing them off their ancestors’ land, perhaps permanently. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed this way since October.

Common Language

One of the worst atrocities perpetrated against Muslims since India’s partition occurred in 2002 in the western state of Gujarat. (Not coincidentally, that state’s chief minister at the time was Narendra Modi.) Following the alleged torching of a train compartment in which 58 Hindu nationalist “volunteers” were traveling, Hindu mobs inflicted state-sponsored terrorism on the Muslim community across Gujarat. More than 2,000 Muslims were killed. Speaking in the aftermath of that horror, then-prime minister A.B. Vajpayee offered a perfunctory admission of regret for the carnage, only to ask rhetorically, “Lekin aag lagayi kisne?” (“But who lit the fire?”) The implication was that since some from their community were accused of committing the initial crime, all Gujarat Muslims were responsible and that, however regrettably, justified their slaughter.

Similar allegations of collective guilt and justifications for collective punishment have a long history in Israel, as in the current conflict. In October, Israeli President Isaac Herzog claimed that “there is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” That comment earned Herzog a place in a greatest-hits video of Israeli leaders attempting to defend atrocities inflicted on Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants. Similarly, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. told Sky News, “I am very puzzled by the constant concern which the world… is showing for the Palestinian people, and is actually showing for these horrible inhuman animals.”

Some of the language surrounding it can be similar. Allegations that, in their October 7th attack on Israel, Hamas fighters beheaded children and tore fetuses from women’s wombs — none of which have been substantiated — eerily echo the sexualized violence committed by Hindu mobs in Gujarat in 2002 (rape, mutilation, the killing of women and their babies, and other horrors). A report of attackers using a sword to cut a fetus out of a Muslim woman and burning the bodies of both fetus and mother has been told and retold countless times over the past two decades.

And within mere hours of the October 7th attack in Israel, BJP politicians and Hindu nationalists in India were spreading propaganda on social media, including accusations that Palestinians were “worse than animals” and were cutting fetuses from wombs, beheading children, and taking girls as “sex slaves.” This started in India before IDF spokespeople began spreading similar claims.

An Unnatural Disaster

Drawing a comparison to the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the Israeli agriculture minister, a member of the security cabinet, recently explained his government’s goal to a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz this way: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.” (Nakba was a reference to Israel’s forcible expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from large portions of their territory in 1948.) When the incredulous reporter tossed the minister a lifeline, asking if he really meant what he’d said, he doubled down: “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

As of now, it certainly looks that way. The IDF bombed apartment blocks, shelters, schools, and hospitals in northern Gaza to force the migration of the population there toward supposedly “safe” south Gaza. They then began bombing southbound car caravans and even ambulances in which refugees were fleeing. Large groups of other Gazans were forced to make the long journey south on foot through narrow IDF-designated corridors. As the Guardian reported in mid-November,

“Those walking south under the tense gaze of Israeli troops, through a hellscape of tangled rubble that had been buildings two months ago, along roads shattered by weapons and churned to mud by tanks, had little hope of rest when they reached the south. Shelters are crammed, food and water supplies are so low the UN has warned that Palestinians face the ‘immediate possibility’ of starvation, infectious diseases are spreading, and the war there is expected to intensify in coming days.”

Israel soon began bombing parts of South Gaza, too, clearly trying to drive the refugees further south, possibly even through the Raffah gate into Egypt. But Egypt has refused to participate in such an ethnic-cleansing campaign. So, figuratively speaking, millions of desperate Palestinians have their backs to the wall, or in this case, fence, with nowhere to run.

As economic and geopolitical ties among Israel, India, and the U.S. have only continued to strengthen, Joe Biden has chummed it up with both Netanyahu and Modi, averting his eyes from their antidemocratic and all-too-violent national visions. He has backed the assault on Gaza all the way and as late as November 18th was still arguing in the Washington Post against a ceasefire. At the same time, he called for increasing the flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza to remedy critical staggering shortages of food, water, housing, and fuel. In other words, the Biden administration is treating the catastrophe there like a natural disaster, acting as if there’s something terrible happening, something beyond his (or anyone’s) power to prevent, so all that can be done is to aid the survivors.

In truth, administrations in Washington have been treating Israel’s occupation and immiseration of the West Bank and Gaza like a natural disaster for more than half a century now. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, recently pointed out an incident that suggests just how disingenuous that claim is. In November, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant came under withering criticism for permitting a few small, wholly inadequate truckloads of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza from Egypt. As Theoharis noted, Gallant defended his decision to allow the aid this way: “The Americans insisted, and we are not in a place where we can refuse them. We rely on them for planes and military equipment. What are we supposed to do? Tell them no?” This puts the lie to the idea that Washington has no influence over the progress or outcome of this war. It does have influence over Israel — more than $3 billion worth in the form of military aid provided by Washington every year, not to speak of the $14 billion the Biden administration still wants to reward Israel with.

As we write this, we don’t know what will happen to the people of Gaza once the temporary ceasefire for prisoner exchanges expires. But rest assured that the governments of India and Israel will continue to feed off each other as they develop new strategies, tactics, and propaganda for their respective campaigns of occupation and oppression, campaigns the U.S. government, through both action and inaction, is endorsing. Consider them now three nations under god(s) of hell.

Copyright 2023 Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox

Via Tomdispatch.com

Analysts rushed to comment that the enlargement is anti-democratic and China-centric; however, a close look at the enlargement shows that the enlargement is not only about China but more of a consensus of the five powers, including, more importantly, India and Russia in addition to China. Of course, China is the most potent power in the bloc and might increase its influence over time. However, the current expansion shows that none of these countries are states that India and Russia reject, as they include Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two powers that have warm relations with India and an increasingly close relationship with Russia. Moreover, Brazil was already willing to accept Argentina as a member of BRICS in case it would help the neighbouring country in its quest for foreign reserves.

Indeed, these analysts ignore the warm relations between India and the two Gulf states, underestimate the tension between China and India, and tend to show the current members of BRICS under great Chinese influence, which is not necessarily true as India and China have significant issues, including but not limited to border crises. Otherwise, China President Xi Jinping’s meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BRICS Summit in South Africa would not present a significant diplomatic incident.. The tension worsened in 2020 and cost the lives of 20 Indian soldiers.

Is BRICS+ the new G7?

In its current form, BRICS represents around 40.72 percent of the world population; if the new members accept the offer, the representation will rise to 45.95 percent, a significant rate as China and India’s share is around 35.48 percent. Similarly, the current GDP share of the BRICS is around 25.77 percent, while the expansion would bring it to around 28.99 percent, another significant increase as 17.86 percent of the current club’s GDP comes from China alone. On the other hand, the G7 represents around 27 percent of the world’s GDP and around 10 percent of the world’s population.

BRICS has long been considered an alternative initiative to the Western system as it includes Russia and China as leading powers, despite its loose institutionalization. One of the BRICS targets is to de-dollarise trade and bypass US sanctions on global trade. Indeed, BRICS created a development bank to encourage trade in local currencies and support developmental projects, an alternative to the Western-centric IMF and World Bank.

While BRICS, in its current form, does not challenge UN-based institutions, it can be considered an alternative to the G20 or G7, if not a rival. The G20, too, is not a very effective platform but a place where world leaders discuss significant issues and attempt to form a global agenda. Indeed, G20 meetings have recently been defined as “empty talks” by analysts.

China and the Gulf

While none of the new members states that China would reject their membership, showing their membership as pure Chinese influence is inherently wrong as they include two members of the GCC with India who already share close ties. The close ties between India and the GCC can be seen from the G20, too, as India invited the UAE and Oman as this year’s G20 guests, in addition to Saudi Arabia, a permanent member of the G20.

While India is particularly close to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because of the number of expatriates in the Gulf, China is interested in these states for more strategic reasons. China made headlines in May when it brokered a normalisation agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, inviting Iran and its regional rivals Saudi Arabia and the UAE together to the bloc is interesting as the bloc does not want to include only the “isolated” countries from the Western system, preventing it from being a platform of excluded powers.

Even though the existence of Russia and China and their influence in the bloc signal anti-Americanism, BRICS, even in its 11-member form, is not inherently anti-American. Indeed, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, stated, “We do not want to be a counterpoint to the G7, G20, or the United States.” This is an important message for Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as they do not want to exclude themselves from the American security umbrella but also want to diversify their security and strategic importance to gain leverage against the US. Thus, by joining this kind of organisation, they hit two birds with one stone.

Not long ago, in 2022, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were granted dialogue partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, an even bigger anti-Western organisation than the BRICS. Iran was granted full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Council in 2023. Therefore, despite Iran and its Gulf rival Saudi Arabia and the UAE not sharing warm relations and having situated themselves on different poles, if Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s role is upgraded to full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Council and Saudi Arabia accepts BRICS offers, these two non-Western organisations would be platforms where they can have dialogue and use it as leverage with the West. As these two clubs will be new platforms where non-Western states have leadership, they can offer more equal negotiations between Iran and its Gulf neighbours, as none would have better privileges over others.

Of course, considering the new members, including the closest US MENA partners such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, one wonders if they are really asking for an alternative to US hegemony. In its 11-state form, the new bloc can benefit the organisation and the new members, including those directly linked to the US security umbrella. While Russia and China attempt to counterbalance the US-based Western system, most of the new members, most importantly in our case, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, attempt to diversify their geopolitical engagements with the rest of the world while still giving greater attention to the US and the West. The greater attention paid to the US and the West can be seen from their reactions to the offer, particularly Saudi Arabia’s. While UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed published a statement showing his appreciation of the offer, Saudi Arabia is yet to accept the offer and stated it will study the deal and give an appropriate decision,” a message to its Western allies that their priorities are still the West and also could be a bit disappointed by the offer to Iran too.

In short, considering the share of China and India’s oil and gas exports from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with India’s warm relations with these states, the invitation of these two states can be considered Indian-influenced as much as Chinese. Moreover, considering South Africa’s relations with Ethiopia and Brazil’s relations with Argentina, one can say BRICS’s enlargement is not solely Chinese dictation but more of a common ground for all members.

Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country of some 220 million people, the fifth most populous in the world It has a nominal GDP per annum of some $350 billion (in the same general range as South Africa, Egypt, Iran and Chile). Its most fertile regions comprise the Indus River basin. Water is the country’s lifeblood, and it is estimated that some 74% of the Indus Valley run-off derives from Himalayan snowmelt and glacier melt. It is likely to decrease by 5% to 12% by 2050. The melting of the glaciers and the retreat of the snow cover there at the top of the world are therefore an existential issue for Pakistan.

Image by lutz from Pixabay

If the world goes on putting 36 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year and doesn’t pull back significantly, actually the melting could be twice as bad. And under the worse case scenario, where human beings just do nothing to fight climate change, by the end of this century, 2081-2100, fully 80% of the lower-lying Himalayan ice will be gone.

These findings, by the way, pertain not only to the lower levels of the Himalayas but also the European Alps, the Rockies, and the Andes.

The reason for the melting of the surface ice in the Hindu Kush Himalayas is obvious. Glacier mass changes have been accelerating because of increased heat owing to human-induced climate change. Temperatures have been going up by an average of +0.28 °C (about half a degree Fahrenheit) every decade since 1951.

The rate of mass loss in the ice between the 1970s and 2019 has increased 65%. Even just in this century, the amount of ice mass lost in 2000-2009 was -0.17 meters water equivalent. But in 2010-2019 it jumped up to -0.28 meters water equivalent.

Seasonal snow cover in the Himalayas is decreasing at an alarming rate. At the lower elevations, there has been a loss of 5 snow-cover days per decade since the 1970s.

The Asian Exchange Union was established in 1972 and was intended to decolonize the banking system and allow member states to trade with one another without going through the old imperial powers. It never has, however, amounted to much, though it may suddenly be a bigger deal if Iran’s plans are implemented.

In the end the representatives voted to explore the formation of a non-dollar basket of currencies, to bring into being a digital currency controlled by the central banks of member states, and setting up an international banking exchange to rival the US-dominated SWIFT. The US has kicked both Iran and Russia off of SWIFT and interdicted their use of dollars, which has hurt their trade and foreign exchange reserves.

The non-dollar basket of currencies to be used as an alternative to the US dollar as a reserve currency would initially consist of the Chinese yuan, the UAE dirham and the Russian ruble, according to the plan voted on.

The United Arab Emirates’ central bank took part last year in a trial of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) using mBridge technology directed by the Bank for International Settlements and looking at the potential use of CBDC’s for “international transactions.” The study’s participants also comprised “the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the Bank of Thailand, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority with participants hailing the results of the study,” according to Coingeek.

The third resolution was to set up an alternative to the SWIFT bank exchange. According to Investopedia, “The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system powers most international money and security transfers. SWIFT is a vast messaging network used by financial institutions to quickly, accurately, and securely send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. ”

Mohsen Karimi, the International Vice President of Iran’s Central Bank, said at the Tehran summit, “The interbank messenger replacing SWIFT will be implemented within the next month among the members of the Asian Exchange Union.” He said that Iran has designed a new exchange that will message members of the Asian Exchange Union’s banks and allow currency transfers among them. He said this method will be cheaper than SWIFT.

For many reasons, the dollar is likely to remain the world’s reserve currency for some time, and the SWIFT banking exchange will remain central. Still, it may be possible for this rival basket of currencies to replace the dollar in Asia for some purposes, and a new banking exchange that allowed South Asian countries to deal with Iran and Russia in ways that the US cannot easily sanction would have its attractions. It is certainly the case that Washington’s over-use of financial sanctions is likely sooner or later to cause other countries to move away from the US-dominated banking exchange and from the dollar, which is a Trojan Horse for the Office of Foreign Asset Control of the US Department of the Treasury.

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Are you worried about the rising political power of violent white nationalists in America? Well, you’ve got plenty of company, including U.S. national security and counterterrorism officials. And we’re worried, too — worried enough, in fact, to feel that it’s time to take a look at the experience of India, where Hindu supremacist dogma has increasingly been enforced through violent means. While there are striking parallels between both countries, India appears to have ventured further down the road of far-right violence. Its experience could potentially offer Americans some valuable, if grim, lessons.

As a start, let’s look at two recent incidents, one in India and the other in the United States.

Laws passed in most Indian states against the killing of cattle have served as a common pretext for the violent enforcement of Hindu beliefs. Recently, for example, three men were arrested on charges of abducting and murdering Junaid and Nasir, two Muslim men transporting cattle through the northern state of Haryana. They first beat Junaid to death, then strangled Nasir. Both bodies were incinerated in a car left at the side of the road. That attack was linked to paramilitary gangs known as gao rakshaks (cow protectors) who, in these last years, have been on a rampage of violence in northern India, though similar horrors have recently been recorded further south in Maharashtra, home to India’s largest city, Mumbai.

In the United States, too, violent hatred is both on the rise and being all too perversely celebrated on the right. Within three days of being charged with involuntary manslaughter, Daniel Penny, the U.S. Marine veteran who made national news by choking to death Jordan Neely, a homeless, mentally ill Black man on a New York City subway car, raised a whopping $2.7 million from the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo. Charged with manslaughter, he’s already been dubbed a “subway Superman” by Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, while his fellow Floridian, Governor Ron DeSantis, tweeted that to “stop the Left’s pro-criminal agenda” we all must “stand with Good Samaritans like Daniel Penny.”

Sadly enough, those episodes, occurring half a globe apart, are just two data points in surges of violent extremism sweeping both India and the United States. That trend first took off in India in 2014 with the election victory of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), making him prime minister. In the United States, it hit big time with the 2016 election of Donald Trump as president. But such mayhem — and the broad approval of political violence by Hindu supremacists there and white supremacists here — has only grown in the years since.

Those incidents also illustrate one crucial difference between far-right violence in India and the United States. Whereas the surge of Hindu-supremacist violence has become a nationally organized collective effort, most American white-supremacist violence is still being committed by individuals acting alone.

In the U.S., we’ve experienced a growing outbreak of hate shootings in which the victims simply find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time (and all too often of the wrong color), even as a longer-term trend of mass killings committed by racially motivated and ever better armed “lone wolves” rises. Notably, among those solo actors, Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, and a host of others have reaped lavish praise from leading Trumpublican politicians, including that MAGA kingpin The Donald himself. (He, in fact, invited Rittenhouse to Mar-a-Lago in 2021.) And 2023 is already on track to set a record for mass shootings, while hate crimes in general rose to more than 200 per week in 2021, the last year for which the FBI has complete data. The vast majority of those crimes were committed by unaffiliated individuals.

In India, by contrast, hate violence is often highly organized. The cattle vigilantes recently arrested in Haryana, for example, were affiliated with Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of Vishnu Hindu Parishad (the World Hindu Council), which, in turn, is an offshoot of a vast Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

The RSS movement was launched in 1925 with one mission: to make India (then still a British colony) a Hindu Rashtra — that is, a “Hindu Nation.” Its approach was inspired by the fascist movements of a century ago in Italy and Germany. Today, it has a membership of five to six million and holds daily meetings in more than 36,000 different locations across India. Worse yet, the ruling BJP party, with Modi at its head, is an offshoot of RSS.

In 2002, Modi was the chief minister of the state of Gujarat when horrific communal violence took almost 2,000 lives, mostly Muslim, in a political and social earthquake that helped kick off the current wave of Hindu nationalism. In 2014, on the strength of the Hindu nationalist bona fides he’d earned 12 years earlier, he became prime minister and soon all hell broke loose.

Cows and Bulls**t

In a majority of India’s states today, cow slaughter is designated a crime and put in the same category with rape, murder, or sedition. As Harsh Mander, who has organized against communal and religiously-inspired violence, explains in his book Partitions of the Heart, “The campaign today that claims to defend [the cow] has nothing to do with love of any kind.” It is instead “another highly emotive symbol to beat down India’s minorities into submission and fear.”

Laws against cattle slaughter and beef consumption lay largely dormant until 2014. Now, they are being enforced ever more violently by Hindu supremacist vigilantes. Those laws, in fact, have provided a much-needed pretext for extreme violence. As Tej Parikh noted recently in the Asia-Pacific magazine The Diplomat, “Two Muslim women were raped in Mewat [in Haryana state] in early September [2022], after their attackers had accused them of eating beef.” And to put those acts in the context of this moment, he added that “the maximum sentence for a convicted rapist in Haryana is three years less than for a cow slaughtering offense.”

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As Mander has pointed out, such beef bans are a tool for subjugating Muslims, Dalits (formerly referred to pejoratively as “untouchables”), Christians, and Adivasis (Indigenous peoples) to Hindu rule. Strange as it may sound, an American analogy could be the criminalization of abortion. In one country, cattle, in the other, human fetuses are being used as right-wing implements to oppress, socially control, and reassert supremacy over significant sections of our respective populations.

As in the U.S., violence against women is rampant in India and perpetrators are often treated with remarkable leniency. Consider Sandip, Ramu, Lavkush, and Ravi, four upper-caste Hindus who, in 2020, tortured, gang-raped, and killed a 19-year-old Dalit girl in the middle of a pearl millet field in the state of Uttar Pradesh. This March, a court found Sandip alone guilty — and only of “culpable homicide not amounting to murder.” The other three men were acquitted.

In the Hindu supremacist context, the phrase ghar wapsi (which literally means “homecoming”) refers to forcibly converting people from Islam or Christianity to Hinduism. In a recent typical case, a BJP politician, the state secretary of Chhattisgarh in northeastern India, home to many low-caste Hindus and tribal peoples, coerced more than 1,100 Christians into undergoing a ghar wapsi ceremony.

Hindu supremacists regularly use confinement and violence to secure such conversions. For instance, two women have filed a complaint against priests at a yoga center in the state of Kerala where they were held captive in an effort to do so. “I was forced to do work as housemaid including cleaning and preparing dishes for 65 inmates,” one of them swore in her affidavit. A priest, she wrote, “threatened that they would kill Isaac [her Muslim husband] if I went back to him.” The other woman told the court, “People at the [yoga] center asked me to leave [her Muslim husband] Hameed. When I resisted, they slapped my face, kicked my lower abdomen and stuffed cloth in my mouth to prevent me from screaming.”

Hindu nationalists are also raising alarms over “love jihad,” a false conspiracy theory that claims Muslim men are out to charm Hindu women into wedlock, conversion, and the production of Muslim babies. A recently released propaganda film, The Kerala Story, purports to show how 32,000 women from that state were converted to Islam and recruited by Islamic State terrorists. No matter that none of that ever happened, “love jihad” rhetoric, including the portrayal of Muslim men as “deceitful, sexual monsters,” is being embraced even by white supremacists in the United States, according to Zeinab Farokhi, a professor at Toronto University.

East Meets West, West Meets Caste

Washington and New Delhi recently announced that Prime Minister Modi will be making a state visit to the U.S. in June. During that visit, notes the Indian outlet The Wire, “Modi is likely to visit New York for Yoga Day on June 21.”

Indeed, he will, for that annual yoga event was Modi’s brainchild. In 2014, he proposed that an International Day of Yoga be celebrated at the summer solstice and the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution to that effect. An avid yoga practitioner, Modi then wrote, “Yoga embodies unity of mind and body, thought and action… a holistic approach [that] is valuable to our health and well-being.” These days, maybe Modi should take a little more time for yoga, which might allow him to gain a more holistic understanding of the hate and cruelty now rippling through Indian society. (Substitute Donald Trump for Modi doing yoga, if you want a little grim humor right now.)

Today, there are an estimated 4.3 million South Asian-Americans living in the U.S., including people from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. A report released by a caste-abolitionist group, Equality Labs, entitled “Caste in the United States,” found that even in America, “many South Asians who identify as being from the ‘lower’ castes… tend to hide their caste,” because they fear that “they and their families could be rejected from South Asian cultural and religious spaces, lose professional and social networks, or even face bullying, abuse, and violence.”

Recently, however, a few rays of light have pierced the political gloom. In February, Seattle became the first city in the U.S. to prohibit caste discrimination and (joke, joke) yoga had nothing to do with it. The ban passed because of the hard work and solidarity of local activists, along with socialist Seattle city council member Kshama Sawant who proposed it. Then, on May 11th, casteism was banished from an entire state, the nation’s largest, when the California senate passed a bill to that effect.

To add another positive note, the very next day, Modi’s BJP was trounced by the Congress Party in elections to the legislative assembly of Karnataka, a crucial state in Indian politics. When the BJP won it five years ago, it was considered a key step in that party’s rise to national dominance. Now, those of us in favor of genuine democracy and not right-wing terror in both countries can only hope that the Karnataka defeat is a harbinger of BJP’s decline (just as we hope that neither Donald Trump nor Ron DeSantis can take the White House in 2024).  

But even small victories don’t come without pushback from Hindu-nationalist expatriates and RSS/BJP “intellectuals” in India, as is true with Trumpists in America. Unsurprisingly enough, they condemned the new caste measures in the U.S., declaring them “Hinduphobic” (just as white right-wingers here chant “All Lives Matter” in the context of police violence and to mock the Black Lives Matter movement). But, asks the political theorist Kancha Ilailah Shepherd, “How can the practice of caste discrimination… be tackled without local laws or institutional rules?”

Too many upper-caste Indians and white Americans think of themselves as the only ones worthy of enjoying the spoils of the earth. They want it all and are ready to get it by exploiting, not to say violating, non-upper-caste bodies in India and non-white ones in the U.S., along with cows and fetuses, using religion as a tool in both cases. The bodies of Dalits, Muslims, Christians, the people of occupied Kashmir, liberals, journalists, historians, climate and human rights activists, educators, Blacks, Indigenous people, women, LGBTQ people — all of them are fodder for the violent right-wing in both countries.

In the sludge of such destructive exceptionalism, there can be felt a sense of uncertainty, a potential for both of our societies to break down completely. Sadly, yoga and vegetarianism do not encapsulate life in India; upper-caste exceptionalism does. Similarly, “peace and love,” not to speak of democracy, hardly define life in America anymore for a growing set of Trumpublicans. For them, white exceptionalism does and, worse yet, these days it goes all too well armed with that best-selling weapon of this moment, the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

Honestly, there needs to be a deeper discussion of all of this before it’s too late.

Copyright 2023 Priti Cox and Stan Cox

Tomdispatch.com

That notion would become the basis for the Obama administration’s initial outreach to China, though it would lose its appeal in Washington as tensions with Beijing continued to rise over Taiwan and other issues. Still, if the war in Ukraine teaches us anything, it should be that, whatever the desires of America’s leaders, they will have little choice (other than war) but to share global governance responsibilities with China and, in a new twist on geopolitics, with India, too. After all, that rising nuclear-armed nation is now the most populous on the planet and will soon possess the third-largest economy as well. In other words, if global disaster is to be averted, whether Americans like it or not, this country will have little choice but to begin planning for an emerging G-3.

Two questions come to mind immediately: Why the G-3, and why is its emergence likely to be such an inevitable outcome of the war in Ukraine?

Starting with the second of those critical questions, the G-3 lies in our future exactly because neither the United States nor Russia has proven capable of achieving what its leaders might consider a satisfactory outcome to that war. On Moscow’s side, the possibility of wiping out Ukraine as a functioning state has proven a remarkable failure; on Washington’s, the utter defeat of Russia and the demise of Vladimir Putin appears highly unlikely. 

Amid the seemingly never-ending catastrophe of the war in Ukraine, it’s become increasingly evident that China and India are likely to shape its final resolution. Russia can’t keep fighting without the support of those two countries, thanks to their refusal to abide by harsh Western sanctions, their continuing trade with Moscow, and their massive purchases of Russian fossil-fuel reserves. In addition, neither of those countries wants the war to escalate or drag on for much longer, given the harm it’s doing to the prospects of global growth. For the Chinese, in particular, it’s been generating friction with crucial trading partners in Europe who resent Beijing’s continuing ties to Moscow. For their own reasons, therefore, the leaders of those two countries are likely to put increasing pressure on both Moscow and Kyiv to seek a negotiated outcome that will, it goes without saying, satisfy neither side.

At the same time, while the war in Ukraine has exposed the startling weakness of Russia’s previously vaunted military, it has also revealed in a striking fashion the limits of American power. After all, when the war began in February 2022, President Joe Biden was confident that most of the world would join the U.S. and Europe in isolating Moscow by, among other things, halting purchases of Russian energy supplies and imposing tough sanctions on that country. For him, this was still the American Century. “The United States is not doing this alone,” he declared at the time. “For months, we’ve been building a coalition of partners representing well more than half of the global economy… We will limit Russia’s ability to do business in dollars, euros, pounds, and yen to be part of the global economy.”

As it happens, we seem to have entered a new yet-to-be-defined epoch characterized by diminishing U.S. global clout. After all, despite determined efforts by Washington and its NATO allies to limit Russia’s access to the global economy, Moscow has largely succeeded in keeping itself afloat, even while financing its ever more expensive military disaster in Ukraine. Thanks for this go significantly to China and India, which have continued to buy enormous quantities of Russian oil and natural gas (even if at steeply discounted prices).

No less significantly, Washington has largely failed to persuade most of the global South, including key rising powers like Brazil, India, and South Africa, to embrace President Biden’s view of the Ukraine war as an “existential” struggle between liberal democratic states and illiberal autocratic ones. As he put it in a speech delivered a year ago in Warsaw, “We [have] emerged anew in the great battle for freedom, a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

But outside Europe, such ringing statements have largely fallen on deaf ears, as non-Western leaders have emphasized their own national needs and decried the West’s hypocrisy when it comes to defending the global “rules” it claims to honor. In particular, they have complained about the way such sanctions imposed on Russia have raised food and fertilizer prices in their own countries, harming millions of their citizens.

“I would still like to see a more rules-based world,” S. Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, typically told Roger Cohen of the New York Times. “But when people start pressing you in the name of a rules-based order to give up, to compromise on what are very deep interests, at that stage I’m afraid it’s important to contest that and, if necessary, to call it out.”

Little as Washington has attended to such perspectives, count on one thing: post-Ukraine, we will find ourselves in a new world order. After the expected Ukrainian spring/summer offensive, which is unlikely to dislodge all Russian troops from the lands they’ve seized since last February, India and China will almost certainly be nudging both countries toward a peace settlement aimed more at restoring the flow of global trade than upholding fundamental principles of any sort.

Indeed, the Chinese peace plan for the war, though ignored or reviled by most Western analysts, may end up proving the most effective blueprint for a settlement, with its vague call for respecting the sovereignty of all states and its emphasis on eliminating sanctions, restoring global supply lines, and freeing up the Russian and Ukrainian grain trade. Indeed, however reluctantly, even Secretary of State Antony Blinken has conceded that it might provide a template for a future settlement.

Why the G-3?

While the outcome of the Ukraine war still remains in doubt, count on one thing: the emergence of China and India as major actors in its resolution will help define the future world order — one in which the United States will have to share global governance responsibilities with China and India, the world’s two other major power nodes. Europe isn’t qualified to play such a role because of its internal divisions and dependence on U.S. military power; Russia isn’t because of the decline of its military and economic strength. The G-3 countries, however, possess some basic characteristics that set them apart from all other powers and are only likely to become more pronounced in the future.

Let’s start with population. In 2022, China, India, and the United States had the world’s largest, second-largest, and third-largest populations, jointly accounting for an estimated 3.2 billion people, or approximately 40% of all people on the planet. While India is expected to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation this year, those three countries are still likely to remain atop the population heap in 2050, hosting an estimated 3.4 billion people by then. Of course, no one knows how major famines, pandemics, or climate disasters may affect such numbers, but those populations do confer enormous advantages when it comes to production, consumption, and even, if necessary, war-fighting.

Next, consider economic clout. The U.S. and China have long had the world’s number one and two economies, with India in sixth place and rising, if still behind Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. It is, however, expected to overtake the UK this year and, in some projections, will reach number three by 2030. Together, the G-3 will then account for a greater share of global economic activity than the next 20 countries combined, including all the European economies and Japan. Consider that a form of power no one will be able to ignore.

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The U.S. and China are widely assumed to possess the world’s two largest and most powerful militaries, with Russia still claiming the third spot, though its military has been severely diminished thanks to the war in Ukraine and isn’t likely to regain its prewar strength for years, if ever. India’s military is large indeed, with an estimated 1.4 million men and women in uniform (compared to China’s two million, Russia’s less than a million, and America’s 1.4 million), but it’s not as well equipped with advanced weaponry as the other three. The Indians are, however, spending billions of dollars on the acquisition of advanced combat systems from Europe, Russia, and the United States. As its share of global wealth increases, count on New Delhi to invest ever more money in the “modernization” of its armed forces.

There is one other area where China, India, and the U.S. lead the world in numbers: in their emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate-altering greenhouse gases. With all three continuing to rely on fossil fuels for a large share of their energy consumption, China, India, and the U.S. are expected to top the list of the world’s leading carbon-emitters for decades to come. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the G-3 will account for an estimated 42% of global carbon emissions by 2050 — more than Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East combined.

The G-3 in Practice

Total up all those factors and it’s obvious that China, India, and the United States are likely to dominate any future world order. Sadly, that doesn’t mean they’re destined to cooperate — far from it. Competition and conflict will undoubtedly remain an enduring characteristic of their relationships, with the ties between any two of them constantly waxing and waning. (Think of the revolving alliances and antagonisms between Eastasia, Eurasia, and Oceana in George Orwell’s prophetic dystopian novel 1984.) But of one thing we can be certain: no major global problem, whether it be climate change, economic catastrophe, another lethal pandemic, or a Ukraine-style war, will be solved if those three powers can’t figure out some form of cooperation, however informal.  

There was at least one previous moment of three-way concordance. In November 2014, in the leadup to the Paris Climate Summit of the next year, President Barack Obama forged a working alliance with President Xi Jinping of China aimed at achieving a successful outcome and then incorporated Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi into their joint effort. His meetings with Xi and Modi at the start of the Paris summit were, according to then-White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, meant to “send a strong message to the world about their strong commitment to climate change.” Many analysts believe that the 2015 summit would never have succeeded had it not been for the combined leadership of Obama, Xi, and Modi.

Needless to say, that budding partnership was upended when Donald Trump entered the White House and terminated U.S. adherence to that agreement. All too sadly, in the years that followed, Washington’s cooperation with Beijing and New Delhi on climate change largely ceased, while American disputes with China over trade, Taiwan, and the South China Sea only grew more heated. Today, the leaders of the world’s top two economies are barely speaking and their armed forces appear poised for a violent clash at almost any moment. They also remain at odds over Ukraine, with Washington demanding that Beijing sever economic ties with Russia and the Chinese insisting on the legitimacy of their “ironclad” alliance with Moscow.

Again, all too sadly, such antagonisms are more likely to prove the norm in U.S.-China relations than that brief outburst of cooperation in 2014-2015. And while India has grown closer to the United States in recent years — in large part to balance China’s growing economic and military might — its leaders are loathe to become overly dependent on any foreign power, however closely aligned they might be in political terms. The prognosis, then, is for continued brittle and often tense relations among the G-3 countries.

Nonetheless, those three nations will have little choice but to deal with one another in some fashion when it comes to the major global problems confronting all of them. Climate change is certainly among the most pressing: if global carbon emissions continue to rise in accordance with the IEA’s current projections, world temperatures could soar to far more than 2.0 Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial era, the target cap set by the Paris Climate Agreement. That, in turn, will ensure a calamitous new reality for all three countries (as well as the rest of the world), including extreme coastal inundation, widespread desertification, and profound water scarcity. None of them can avoid such an outcome alone. Only by working in concert to reduce global emissions might they avert what is otherwise likely to be climate catastrophe for themselves and the planet.

The same is true of any other major global challenge, including future severe economic crises, pandemic outbreaks, major regional conflicts, and the further proliferation of nuclear weapons. However uncomfortable the leaders of China, India, and the United States might be when it comes to collaborating with their counterparts, they will have little choice if they are to escape an increasingly calamitous future. Like it or not, they will have to embrace some form of G-3 collaboration, however little acknowledged it may be at first. In time, as they come to recognize their mutual interdependence, they might even find themselves collaborating in a more formal, amicable manner — to the benefit of all the inhabitants of planet Earth.

Copyright 2023 Michael T. Klare

Via Tomdispatch.com

The heatwave sweeping across Asia has forced schools in India to shut. With our children already paying a terrible price for climate change, we must act to protect their future, urges an IPCC scientist

Aditi Mukherji

( The Third Pole ) – When heatwaves disrupt our children’s education, it is time to demand climate action. I am writing this as a climate scientist and a mother of two young children. I was a member of the team that wrote the latest climate report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in March 2023, which was endorsed by 195 governments including India. The report warned of debilitating heatwaves that would test the limits of human endurance.

Those heatwaves are happening right now all over Asia. Heat records have been broken in many parts of the continent, with multiple cities in India surpassing 44 degrees Celsius (111F.). One consequence is that all state schools and colleges in the Indian state of West Bengal, where I live, have been closed, with multiple other Indian states also shutting schools or shortening the school day.

Via Pixabay.

After pandemic-related shutdowns, yet another closure of educational institutions is further affecting the education of millions of young children, with disproportionate impacts falling on children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our children have inherited a much warmer world than the one we were born in due to human-caused climate change, and their future depends on the actions we take today. What can governments, civil society, and we as individuals do to ensure a liveable future for our children?

Source: IPCC Synthesis Report, Figure SPM 1

1. Transition quickly to renewable energy

As much as 95% of West Bengal’s 10.7 gigawatts of installed power capacity comes from fossil fuels like coal. The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of climate change. The state has plans to generate 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, which is too little, too late. Some states in India already generate 40-45% of their electricity from renewable sources, and there is no reason why West Bengal cannot be a leader in this space, especially when the state is already facing unbearable climate impacts like the heatwave unfolding right now.

The roofs of the very schools and colleges that are closed today due to heatwaves can quickly become a source of cheap and clean energy

Achieving a more ambitious target for renewables is doable because we have the technology and it is affordable. It is now cheaper to generate electricity from solar energy than from coal-based thermal plants. What’s missing, though, are proactive policies, such as attractive net metering policies that encourage institutions and households to invest in solar rooftop systems and become energy producers. The roofs of the very schools and colleges that are closed today due to heatwaves can quickly become a source of cheap and clean energy – almost tomorrow if the government provides support for individuals and the private sector to invest.

RecommendedRooftop solar: The missing piece of India’s renewable ambitions

Similarly, the existing 250,000-300,000 electric irrigation pumps in West Bengal can be solarised and connected to the grid, with farmers incentivised to sell excess electricity produced. Research by the International Water Management Institute (which has not yet been published) has found that farmers with grid-connected solar-powered pumps have strong incentives to reduce groundwater pumping, leading to more sustainable outcomes.

Effective net metering policies are the need of the hour, along with rapid investment in upgrading the grid so it can handle large volumes of renewable energy being injected during the day. A major impediment to an effective net metering policy is a mindset that struggles to reimagine electricity consumers as producers of electricity, leading to restrictive grid connection policies which are not as commercially beneficial. When mindsets stand in the way of our children’s future, it is best to let go and embrace the inevitable reality that we need rapid, deep, and sustained emissions reduction now.

2. Decarbonise and improve public transport

This is a space in which the state of West Bengal has already shown excellent leadership. The city of Kolkata has the largest fleet of electric public buses anywhere in India. Per capita ownership of private cars is also lower in West Bengal than the average for India, which is partly a testament to its effective public transport system. Keep it this way and improve public transport by enhancing local train services and adding to the number of electric bus fleets. Trams – the heritage of Kolkata – need to be brought back again, as we need more, not fewer, options for clean transport.

A tram in Kolkata, in India’s West Bengal state. “Clean public transport is a true climate solution,” says IPCC author Aditi Mukherji (Image: Sharon Schneider / Flickr, CC BY NC SA)

For those who own cars, including private taxis, make ownership of electric vehicles more affordable and make charging stations ubiquitous. But remember that clean public transport is a true climate solution.

3. Bring back ‘sponge cities’

The term ‘sponge cities’ is used to describe urban areas with abundant natural features such as trees, lakes and parks, as well as design features, that can absorb rain and prevent flooding. Kolkata, by virtue of its location on the banks of the Hooghly River and the wetlands that surround it, was a sponge city long before the term was used by climate scientists.

RecommendedCan India create more urban forests?

Yet poor urban planning, encroachment on wetlands, and neglect of our natural spaces have meant that our sponge city is now denuded, and less able to cope with both extreme heatwaves and extreme rainfall events. Preventing further encroachment on water bodies and bringing back green spaces by planting trees and creating pockets of urban forests is the need of the hour. Here, local municipalities and individuals can play an important role in demanding that we bequeath cleaner and greener cities to our children.

4. Remember that the individual actions of the top 5% matter

If you are reading this in India, on your way to work in an air-conditioned car or in the drawing room of your own apartment, it is almost certain that you belong to the top 1-5% of Indians in terms of income. A monthly income of INR 25,000 (about USD 300) will put you in this highest income bracket. While these numbers are modest by international standards, and at 1.9 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per capita per year, the typical carbon footprint of an average Indian is a fraction of that of an average American (14.2 metric tonnes of CO2 per capita per year), the fact remains that there are deep income disparities within our country. This gives the wealthiest 1-5% a larger carbon footprint than 95% of the population.

Show me stories of ordinary citizens doing extraordinary things to make our world more liveable

It is therefore also our moral responsibility to reduce our carbon footprint through responsible consumption decisions. As parents, we need to inculcate responsible consumption habits, such as reducing, reusing and recycling. Society and in particular the media need to stop glorifying the unsustainable consumption of the rich and famous. I, for one, do not want to read about how lavish and wasteful the wedding party of India’s richest man’s daughter was. Instead, show me stories of ordinary citizens doing extraordinary things to make our world more liveable. We, as parents, owe it to our children.

It was a pandemic yesterday, it is a heatwave today, and it will be a devastating flood or cyclone tomorrow, when the schools will be closed again. Our children are already paying a terrible price for climate change, and now it is up to us to ensure that they have a liveable future. The window of opportunity for climate action is rapidly closing, and there is no time for further delay.

(The Conversation) – Record-breaking heatwaves in April 2022 put 90% of people in India at increased risk of going hungry, losing income or premature death, according to our new study.

After 2022 was designated the hottest in 122 years, extreme heat has appeared early again this year with over 60% of India recording above-normal maximum temperatures for April, according to the country’s Meteorological Department. El Niño, a natural climate event that can increase global temperatures, is also expected to occur this year.

The increasing frequency of such deadly heatwaves could halt or even reverse India’s progress in reducing poverty, food and income security and gender equality, harming the quality of life for over 1.4 billion Indians.

As a natural phenomenon, extreme heat is projected to occur once every 30 years or so in the Indian subcontinent. This is no longer the case thanks to man-made climate change. India has suffered over 24,000 heatwave-related deaths since 1992 alone, with the May 1998 heatwave being one of the most devastating as it claimed over 3,058 lives.

During the May 2010 heatwaves, temperatures in the western city of Ahmedabad reached 47.8°C and raised heat-related hospital admissions of newborns by 43%, prompting the city to become one of the country’s first to implement a heat action plan meant to guide preparations and emergency responses to heatwaves which has since saved thousands of lives. The 2015 heatwave killed over 2,330 people and prompted the government ministry for disaster management to set guidelines for preventing deaths during heatwaves and push Indian states to develop their own plans.

Failure to implement these strategies may stymie India’s economic progress. If proper heat action plans are not developed, excessive heat could cost India 2.8% and 8.7% of its GDP by 2050 and 2100, respectively. This is a worrying trend, especially given India’s goal of becoming a 10-trillion-dollar economy by 2030.

A ‘real-feel’ measure

Heat action plans are only useful if they can represent the consequences of heatwaves over the entire population. For Indian authorities to recognise when deadly heat is present (and emergency action is needed), the government has to know how conditions feel for the public.

We used an environmental health measure popular in the US called the heat index to determine how hot the human body is likely to feel in relation to air temperature and humidity levels. This helped us to map how sensitive people were to heatwaves across India and discover that 90% of the country was in danger of severe repercussions during last year’s heatwave.

It’s important to accurately measure India’s vulnerability to lethal temperatures. The metric used by the Indian government, known as the climate vulnerability index, does not account for the physical dangers of heat to human health. Our research showed that combining air temperature and relative humidity levels gave our heat index a “real-feel” measure for extreme heat. In other words, how extreme heat felt for people experiencing it.

Stop underestimating heatwaves

Underestimating the effects of extreme heat in India could reduce or even reverse its progress on a range of goals for sustainable development. These include those related to poverty, hunger, health and wellbeing, equality, economic growth and industrial innovation and biodiversity. This is especially concerning given that India’s progress towards achieving these goals has slowed over the last 20 years while the number of extreme weather events has increased.

Extreme heat, for example, can exacerbate drought by drying up the soil and disrupting rainfall patterns, ultimately blighting crop production and food security, which endangers the health and wellbeing of a large portion of Indian society. Being a primarily agricultural economy, productivity losses in this sector threaten the jobs and health of millions of marginal and small landholding farmers, as well as their ability to adapt and take up new livelihoods. Another worrying tendency with heatwaves is increasing water-borne and insect-borne diseases, which could further strain India’s already beleaguered public health system.

Every year, millions of people from rural areas migrate to India’s cities in search of a better quality of life. But heatwaves have a disastrous effect on the country’s urban population too. Practically the entire city of Delhi and its 32 million inhabitants were threatened by the 2022 heatwaves. Most migrants are forced to settle in the city’s poorest quarters, where the effects of heatwaves are particularly catastrophic. Sadly, these communities also lack the means to buy air conditioners that might ease their misery.

Present procedures for assessing the sensitivity of India to climate change will not help people resist the exceptional heat seen in recent years and must be upgraded immediately.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that heatwaves in South Asia will grow more powerful and frequent this century. Heat action plans will be crucial in speeding up efforts to mitigate and adapt to the effects, but they must represent the complexity of India’s vulnerabilities to climate change. The emphasis on making Indian cities resilient to extreme heat is critical, since cities will see a population explosion in the next ten years, with 70% of Indian building stock yet to be created. There is a chance to incorporate methods for adapting to extreme heat by designing new homes that are easier to keep cool.

With many more people in India expected to be hit by even greater heat extremes in the future, finance, urban design and education are necessary to help people adapt.

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Ramit Debnath, Cambridge Zero Fellow, University of Cambridge and Ronita Bardhan, Associate Professor of Sustainability in the Built Environment, University of Cambridge

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