Warren Anderson, Bhopal And Gandhi
By Partha Banerjee
15 June, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Barack Obama told us he has great admiration for Gandhi. We can assume many Bhopal residents are Gandhian too. On the Indian capitol side, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee are all big Gandhi fans. Here on our American side, we now frequently hear big shots mentioning the Mahatma – from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet to Hillary Clinton all now eulogize Gandhi every now and then. Refreshing!
In a not-so-past issue of the Time magazine, a “worldwide” reader polling was done to elect the "greatest" personality of the twentieth century (I wonder though if such an election was indeed possible). In that much-hyped competition, Einstein squeezed passed Gandhi by a razor-thin margin. Gandhi came second.
In the Indian communities of America and Europe, a vast majority of immigrants teach their children a Gandhi the Great doctrine. In my own years of work with the New York and New Jersey communities, I’ve talked to a large number of young, second generation South Asian immigrants. Practically the only national Indian leader from India they know is the Mahatma. They’re passionate about him – some fiercely so.
What about Warren Anderson? My feeling is that had one seriously talked to him especially in the past few days, they’d discover that perhaps he is Gandhian too. This is the same Warren Anderson, who was the 1984 CEO at the Union Carbide. Of course, the company itself is now renamed as Dow Chemicals; therefore, for all intensive purposes, nobody can anymore touch Union Carbide or its criminal activities back then; after all, how can you punish a company when it's not around anymore? American citizen Warren Anderson stepped into Bhopal on December 7, days after the hellish MIC slaughter -- where men, woman and children were killed just the way laboraty mice are killed in an experimental gas chamber -- and was quickly guest-house-arrested. However, at the directives of a mysterious few at the top, he got an immediate bail, and escaped India to return to his Long Island Hamptons palace for good, never to return to India to face any charges.
Who let him off the hook? Nobody knows. But just a couple of days ago, we read newspaper reports that Arjun Singh, then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh (where Bhopal is the state capital) got a critically important telephone call. The caller asked Singh to release Anderson immediately. We might want to talk to Singh now to know more. In all necessity, we must do it; after all, Singh is quite old.
Who could have made that “let him go” call? A few names have surfaced: true or not. One, Rajiv Gandhi, who just two months ago had taken offices of the Indian prime minister after the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, and a consequent mass killing of innocent Sikhs. Rajiv, the husband of Sonia Gandhi, the virtual "queen mother" of today's India, was then trying desperately to open up the Indian markets to foreign companies; in fact, in hindsight, we should call him the Father of the New Indian Open Market Nation. On his side was his internal security minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, another prime proponent of the deregulated economy, who himself became prime minister after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated only a few years later. Some people say it was Rao’s circle the important phone call came from.
(Some are now saying that then U.S. president Ronald Reagan initiated the calling tree; but we'll save that for later; after all, there are so many other notorious calls he'd made worldwide.)
Two men responsible for flinging open the Indian markets to Western multinationals, destroying once and for all a pro-people, pro-worker economic system were also allegedly responsible for forcing Arjun Singh to let Anderson escape India. Now we all know how the new, rampant, “globalized” economy has forever changed the country of one billion, making a small percentage of people extremely wealthy while at the same time, the other some eighty percent of poor Indians going downhill into poverty, helplessness, misery and destitution. Now we know how scary the Indian inflation is, how outrageously expensive the basic commodities, food and oil, health care and education have become, and that a eleven-rupee dollar in 1984 has now turned into a nearly fifty-rupee exchange.
(On the fun front, young generation Indians are now celebrating Bengali, Tamil, Gujarati, Sindhi or Punjabi New Year’s Day at McDonald’s, Pizza Hut or KFC, over MTV, Bollywood and cricket. Well, that’s yet another story.)
But why did they let Warren Anderson go? This man now lives fine in his Bridgehampton cottage; he’s reportedly as happy as a grasshopper and dandy as a Dalmatian, surrounded by friends and relatives and exclusive golf clubs. Had he been held in India back then and questioned and tried under Indian criminal laws, we could’ve gotten a lot of precious information out of him. We could’ve known the names of the people – both Indian and American – behind the criminal negligence that caused the lethal gas to leak out of the factory, and just like a nuclear cloud, killed at least fifteen thousand poor workers and their families and children (official figure) and permanently blinded and crippled at least fifty thousand more. Was there any big bribe involved before or after the catastrophe, and if so, who gave and took the bribe? How much money was involved? Who in the political circles meddled in the wrongdoings?
In fact, we would’ve also gotten information about what are some of the ways “globalized” Third World corporations and their trustee politicians do such deal-making with their American and Western peers and mentors. Warren Anderson could enlighten us a great deal about the "great" deals.
But, we ended up knowing nothing. As soon as the Indian officials let Anderson jump bail and flee India, the investigation and trial of the worst industrial disaster in the history of mankind became a lightweight back burner, dragging the legal proceedings over the next twenty-five years. Just a week or so ago, the Indian courts finally sentenced only eight people convicted – the sentence is a ridiculous, laughable two years in jail and two thousand dollars in fine. Plus, all the convicts are free on bail, with possibilities that they’ll never go in prison. On that final sentencing, there was no mention of the former CEO Anderson whatsoever.
So, Mr. Anderson must be laughing his tails off sitting in front of his Hampton TV set. That's a metaphor, just in case.
I don't have all the facts. However, I personally believe that Gandhism has a lot to do with the little innocent court verdict. We Indians do not believe in violence to avenge violence, or terror against terror. The Indian kings and queens (I mean democratically elected leaders) at the helm of affairs – Sonia Gandhi, the next-in-line prime minister Rahul Gandhi (Rajiv-Sonia’s son), current PM Manmohan Singh, internal security minister Chidambaram, or the Congress Party heavyweight Pranab Mukherjee who they say also happens to be the current India director of the International Monetary Fund – all avid Gandhi’ites – perhaps went one step further and decided that no matter what the crime is, they’re never going to do any harm to an American or European multinational corporation. (Tell me if I'm wrong.) Because that might hurt the Indian government's business-friendly image, and trouble the up-n-coming Westernized MTV-McDonald-GM-cereal-IT-generation Indian middle class and their quest for personal wealth; after all, they’re the next batch of voters lined up to “elect” the crown-prince Rahul Gandhi to be the "leader" of one billion people.
Therefore, the new Indian rulers along with their judiciary now perhaps decided to apply top-gear Gandhism, and let all the old and new real, possible and probable perpetrators and law-violators off the hook. Ahimsa at its best. Union Carbide today, Monsanto, Coke, McDonald’s, GM, IBM tomorrow -- should there be, God forbid, another catastrophe. Another Bhopal coming up? Some old-fashioned journalist already signaled a red flag, just the way they did it six months before the 1984 disaster? We’ll look the other way and stick the other cheek they can slap.
That’s the essence of Gandhism, and India is now its best practitioner; USA and Europe can’t even come close. Hope is, if we can continue with it, the next best-person-in-the-century election will go our way, the Gandhian way. We’re positively patriotic. We’ll all throw big parties to celebrate when it happens – both in India and overseas.
Still, ten, fifteen, twenty thousand killed, blinded and maimed and their unhappy families keep screaming (in person or in spirit) on Bhopal and New Delhi streets? We’ll compensate them with some peanuts and nice election-eve talks, and then turn the page on the history book and move forward; better yet, erase that toxic history from newly published text books. Happily, in today’s Jai Ho Incredible India, nobody gives a hoot about hearing history. So, no bother.
We have other ways to take care of it too. British paper The Independent reported that when Greenpeace – that “radical-commie” environment and human rights group – tracked down Anderson to his luxury home back in 2002, the activists attempted to hand him a symbolic copy of a warrant for his arrest, like a legal subpoena. How rude! How arrogant! What violation of a peaceful, private American citizen’s rights! We don’t hear from Greenpeace any more; must be that American systems took care of them soon after.
We don’t believe in violence of any kind – Greenpeace or Redface. Didn’t I say we were all big Gandhians? Stay the course.
(Writer is a New York-based college professor, labor, media and human rights activist)
