Yesterday was Vijaya Dashami, the Day of Victory that completes the nine-day Hindu Navaratri celebration of the Goddess in all her aspects and manifestations. In mythology, Vijaya Dashami marks the final triumph of the Goddess, after nine days of battle, over the demon Mahishasur. It also marks the start of the harvest season, and invokes the Divine Mother as all the powers of fertility and the life-giving gifts of the earth.

I stand firmly, fiercely, and unequivocally against the global rise of Hindu fundamentalism. In 2002, in the wake of the Gujurat massacres, I wrote Today I Dismantled My Gods (which appears in my poetry collection Shilling Love) and performed it across the US to raise awareness and funds for the survivors.

Today I Dismantled my Gods

Written in 2002, following the massacre of over 2000 Muslims in my ancestral state of Gujurat, by a state-condoned, carefully orchestrated pogrom led by the right-wing Hindu nationalist movement, Hindutva. For more on the Gujurat Massacre and Hindu Nationalism, see www.cac.ektaonline.org

I sat at my altar to pray this morning.
I began as always begin, with A-UM
and it flashed on my retina, bleeding - OM
gashed into the forehead
of a dead Gujurati Muslim - OM
slashed into the pregnant belly
of a Muslim woman - OM!
Scorched into the wet white bones
of children torched on bonfires - OM!!

Sound of creation
seared to evil, hum of the universe
twisted to genocide
and my tongue choked in my throat
and my throat refused to chant
Au - Au -

So I tried to sing
because Ali Akbar Khan has said
music transcends all barriers; I sang

Shiva Shiva mahadeva, namah sivaya sadasiva

and the marching began.
Legions of men, in kakhi shorts
saffron headbands, march - march - march -
ing, howling vengeance; cylinders
of gas passed hand to hand to
gutted door of pillaged Muslim building to
SSSSSS - to lighted match to - POWWW

And in the clouds of smoke
affluent families drove up
in Mitsubishi Lancers
to soak their arms in the torrents
of looting, cellphones spat out
names locations properties,
bloody tickmarks tramped
down spreadsheets, trishuls gleamed
three hideous prongs into the night

Fundamentalism
Fascism
Genocide

Trishuls impaled babies, ripped
fetuses from wombs, tore apart
vaginas. I saw the demonic graffiti:
Andar ka baat hai
Police hamara saat hai
I heard screaming
just like the Bollywood movies
bachau bachau
and if this were a Bollywood movie
Sharukh Khan would swoop down
in a helicopter, tanks and elephants
would storm the bloodcrazed mobs
heroes would arrive.

But the heroes
have turned off their cellphones,
barricaded their homes, the heroes
are on extended tours outside Gujurat
have given orders
No protection to be offered
the heroes
have renounced the gods

Today I dismantled my gods.

I am no longer Hindu
until the word means dharma
not terror, no longer
will I make deevas
to light the rapes of my sisters
no longer pray in temples
built from coffers of fascists
or seek peace in ashrams
locked to terrified victims.
I will worship at no altar
where slaughter feeds the puja
I will claim no murti
hoisted over murder.

Today I dismantled my gods
because they told me to. They said
Go! Meet us
in every human face,
walk our living essence
against mass hysteria: Kali, maha-Kali
who slices the heads off demons
of hatred and ignorance;
Lakshmi, Maha-lakshmi
who pours lotus-compassion
from every orifice
Saraswati who shreds
veils of delusion, dissolves
the choking saffron fog
of politicians' lies.

The gods are calling us
to shatter their images and
BE them - in the streets
the schools and senates; BE them,
love and justice, truth and courage, on platforms
and airwaves, in boardrooms
and parliaments!

They are calling us
to touch them
in every human heart
that repudiates violence,
cherishes Life
and all her children,
calling us
to bow to the word
that resounds in us all, the wind
that sings in us all

Namo brahmane namaste vaayu
twameva pratyaksham brahmaasi
twameva pratyaksham brahma vadishyami

I have taken down my altar
I am in the streets
chanting down that monstrous trinity

Fundamentalism
Fascism
Genocide

until this air is sacred again with our tears.
And I shall worship justice
I shall worship truth

ritam vadishyami
satyam vadishyami

I have put away my gods
until I can face them
without shame
for all our blindness, for the horror
beyond naming wrought
in their names, until I can say
to their eyes:

I defended you
in every living form
I welcomed you
in all that breathes and weeps
I gave my life
to make you

love and justice, truth and courage

make you

manifest.

Om shanti shanti shanti.

Since that time, conversations with progressive South Asian friends and colleagues have convinced me to reclaim my Hindu spiritual and cultural heritage as a feminist scholar, radical activist, and artist. Navaratri has been a potent and transforming festival for me since childhood. It's a time when I reconnect with my own Goddess-hood, and celebrate all the manifestations of the Goddess in my life.

So this year, I was able to re-enter the space I wrote about in an earlier poem, "Ode To Durga", which evokes the Goddess as "Great Mother of the Universe, whose limits are unreachable, present in all beings":

I’m glad I can worship with all my senses,
with petals and flame, bells and incense smoke,
succulent offerings of halwa and khir,
glad this ritual rides a spectrum,
austere silence to ecstatic noise.

More than ever, all of us on the planet need to reconnect to the Sacred Feminine. To move in the world with the radiant consciousness born of that connection; as a collective, unstoppable momentum for reparation, restoration, justice, and equality.

I’m glad I can touch my gods
with intimate reverent fingers,
tangible forms to absorb my fears,
demons, longings,
to draw from me
what’s brave and joyous,
in showers of rice and water,
libations of milk and ghee.

Whenever I doubt my own abilities or capacities, I turn to all the amazing women I know. Writers, scholars, warriors, leaders, builders, activists, healers, dancers, teachers, dreamers, changemakers. I draw on their potency and courage to recharge my own.

Goddess present in all beings
who sang me into the light of dawn,
you who are a million faces,
which one shall I be today?
You whisper in my ear like a lover:
Do the thing you dread the most.

May we all continue to honor this fragile, luminous, wounded world as the Body of the Goddess.

I say: I’m scared.
You say: I know.
I say: This hurts!
You say: So what?
Would you rather stay asleep?
I say: What if…..
You say: Jump.

Yaa devi sarve bhuteshu
Trsna rupena samstitha
Namastasye namastasye
Namastasye namo namah

Goddess present in all beings
in the form of desire,
you whisper in my ear like a lover:
Seek the words of creation.

Name the first hunger:
That of the belly and mouth.
Name the second hunger:
That of the heart for a home.
Name the third hunger:
That of the hands to shape what they touch,
that of the fingers to imprint the world.

Name the final, deepest hunger:
That of the self we dare not name
to be without limitation -
inhabit all that moves and speaks,
runs, flies. breathes,
leaf and stone, sky and bone,
fruition, destruction -
a greed no smaller
than infinity.

O Ma Durga O Ma Durga
O Ma Durga O Ma Durga
Jaya jagadambe Ma Durga
Jaya jagadambe Ma Durga

Durga flaming on your tiger,
Goddess present in all beings,
truth from illusion,
asato ma sat gamaya
light from darkness,
tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
ride triumphant through our monsters,
enter us as if we burned.

• Copyright Shailja Patel, 2002. All Rights Reserved

The results of a new HIV vaccine trial in Thailand, although positive since it shows a lowered the rate of infection amongst those vaccinated, should be treated with cautious optimism. It is, nonetheless, excellent news particularly considering that every day 7,000 people worldwide are newly infected with HIV and that in 2007 over two million people died of AIDS according to UNAIDS (The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS).

The new AIDS vaccine was tried in 16,000 volunteers aged between 18 and 30 in parts of Thailand and was carried out by the US Army, the Thai Ministry of Public Health, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the patent-holders of the two components of the vaccine, Sanofi-Pasteur and Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases.

The vaccine used in this trial was a combination of two vaccines that when tried singly had not cut infection rates. The vaccine combination was based on HIV strains that circulate normally in Thailand. Participants in the study were tested for HIV infection every six months for three years.

The study was carried out in 16,402 volunteers at average risk of HIV infection. Half of the volunteers received the vaccine combination and the other half received a placebo. Both groups received counseling on how to prevent becoming infected with HIV at the beginning of the study and every six months after the start of the study for a total of three and a half years.

Among the participants in the study, new infections occurred in 51 of the 8,197 people given the vaccine, and in 74 of the 8,198 among those who received the placebo. The results indicate that there was a 31% lower risk of infection among those who had received the vaccine.

Although the number of infections in each group under study is relatively small it is statistically significant, as indicated by Dr. Jerome H. Kim, who is the army’s HIV vaccine program. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, concurred on the importance of the results.

Although those obtained are indeed important results it is still necessary to be cautious about its implications. For example, the RV144, the vaccine tested in Thailand, was designed to combat the most common strain of the HIV circulating in Southeast Asia. Different strains circulate in the U.S., Africa and other countries and there is no indication yet that the vaccine could function in similar ways when confronted with different HIV strains.

In addition, the number of people involved in the study shows the need for larger, more expensive trials. And finally, although the difference among subjects who had received the vaccine and those who hadn’t is statistically significant, it is still relatively small to consider it for use in the immediate future.

hat is really important, however, is that this study shows a positive response on an issue that up until now had not offered any hopes for solution. If the positive results are shown to be constant and even increase under different conditions we can expect to conquer an infection of tremendous medical, human and economic costs to society.

Cesar Chelala, MD, PhD, is an international public health consultant for several UN agencies.

Last Sunday at the local farmers market, I learned of the Oakland Underground Film Festival. The festival is this weekend (9/25 to 9/27). One of my favorite films of 2009, Big River Man, is closing the festival! Actually, all of the films screening this weekend look so interesting! And I'm so excited that my town, Oakland, now has an underground film festival!

I call them “regulars” because they are always in my neighborhood in downtown Manhattan. They are out of luck people who depend largely on the help of others. By now, the regulars have become almost like friends.

There is Sarge as we call him, a tall, black, heavyset, intelligent man. He was once in the Army (that’s the reason for his nickname) but with time his health began to deteriorate. Sarge walks with some difficulty. He comes and sits on the steps next to my house at least once a week.

He usually prefaces his request for a handout with a question. “Let me pose you a hypothetical question,” he will say. “Do you think that today there is a possibility you may help me with some change, perhaps also something to eat?” Since he has a genial disposition I am happy to comply.

It is not easy, though, to find foods that he will enjoy, since he claims to have some stomach troubles. I rather believe he is a finicky eater, since there is no specific pattern in what he likes. Despite significant differences in his upbringing, he has something in common with former US President George Herbert Walker Bush: they both detest broccoli.

My wife tends to be more generous with the regulars than myself, so it is not surprising that the three of them like her a lot. “I love your wife” Sarge frequently tells me. When he sees a stern look in my face he adds, “Not in the way you do, though, not in the way you do.” We like to tease each other. A couple of weeks ago I told him, “Hey, Sarge, if you win the lottery will you help me out?” Quick as a weasel he retorted, “Don’t worry, man, I already have you in my will….”

The other regular is Roland, an older man, kind, always with a good word. While my wife was recently in Argentina, he asked me about her every day, probably missing her generous presents. He is also a picky eater, although with a very good reason, since he has had several dental problems in recent times. He has the drawn face of a heavy smoker but otherwise he is very properly dressed and speaks with elegance. Regrettably, life has not been kind to him and now he sleeps on the steps of the neighborhood church, after some unpleasant experiences in a municipal shelter where his things were stolen, several times.

I recently saw him being photographed by an Italian tourist. He posed for her and obediently followed her instructions. After she left I asked him who she was and he told me that she was an art student and that she was planning to use the photographs in her student portfolio at an art school. “I hope that she gave you something for your help,” I told him. “I don’t mind,” he said, “she is only a student.” And he added, proudly, “I am sure that she will do a good job.”

Finally there is Joe, another constant presence in the neighborhood. He usually has a paper cup in his hand where he puts the money he collects. Sometimes I think that he collects a lot since I once saw him counting several large bills. He calls everybody “boss” which is a good way of ensuring a sympathetic response from passersby. He is a young, thin man who walks with a limp and always has a crooked hat on. “Boss,” he would say, handing me his paper cup, “do you have any change?” I usually give him a few coins.

Each of the regulars seems to follow a certain schedule. I tend to see Joe in the mornings, Roland from midday on and Sarge in the early evening. Joe’s request for help is so predictable that one day I decided to surprise him. As soon as I saw him approaching, before he would say anything, I dropped a bunch of coins into his cup. He definitely looked surprised. “Boss, what you are doing?” he yelled at me, “This is my coffee!”

Cesar Chelala writes on human rights issues.

The long awaited U.N. report on the conflict in Gaza is strongly critical of both Israel and Palestinian armed groups. Both sides committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity stated the report that recommends that Israel should start its own credible investigation into the conflict within the next three months.

If Israel refuses to comply with this recommendation, the investigators called on the U.N. Human Rights Council to refer the matter for action by the International Criminal Court prosecutor within six months. Israel, however, doesn’t accept the court’s authority, and calls the council “a body constantly critical of Israel.”

Israeli human rights groups issued a statement in which they call on “the Government of Israel to respond to the substance of the report’s findings and to desist from its current policy of casting doubt upon the credibility of anyone who doesn’t adhere to the establishment’s narrative.”

The U.N. report follows an investigation of the Gaza war by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. More than half of Palestinians killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza were civilians, states B’Tselem. B’Tselem’s assertions, based on exhaustive investigations, should prompt a serious investigation by Israel’s judiciary and, if its denunciations are confirmed, the punishment of those guilty. Israel’s judiciary cannot afford to be complicit in gross human rights violations carried out the Israeli armed forces.

Although the IDF has acknowledged “rare mishaps” in the conduct of the war in Gaza, it has steadfastly denied violating international humanitarian law. B’Tselem’s investigation does not support the IDF’s allegations, and are a serious accusation against the IDF’s actions in Gaza.

According to the IDF, the Gaza Cast Lead operation death toll is 1,166 which includes 709 combatants and 295 civilians, and has refused to release a list of names or any other evidence. B’Tselem’s findings -based on several months of research and visits to the families of the victims- reveal that 1,387 Gazans were killed. That figure includes 773 civilians and 330 combatants.

The IDF claims that the B’Tselem’s figures are based on flawed research, and reliance on figures reported by Palestinian human rights groups. However, the Israeli human rights group’s figures are similar to those reported by Hamas, which claims that more than 1,350 Gaza residents were killed during the operation, most of them civilians. B’Tselem also claims that the IDF withheld information that could have allowed them to cross-check information.

“Behind the statistics lie shocking individual stories. Whole families were killed; parents saw their children shot before their very eyes; relatives watched their loved ones bleed to death; and entire neighborhoods were obliterated,” states B’Tselem. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, however, denounced the “extensive rumors that have considerably damaged the IDF’s image both at home and abroad.”

“The failure of the IDF and Israeli government to investigate serious allegations of wrongdoing by its soldiers precedes Operation Cast Lead,” states Human Rights Watch. Since 2000 this organization has documented the persistent lack of fair investigations into civilian deaths resulting from the use of lethal force in policing and law enforcement situations, as well as from combat situations in the West Bank and Gaza even when confronted with credible allegations that soldiers deliberately harmed civilians. Israel’s conduct clashes with its obligations under international law.

Following Operation Cast Lead, B’Tselem sent Israel’s Attorney General and the military’s Judge Advocate General 20 cases that raise questions of breach of law. Among those cases is the killing of some 90 Palestinians (half of them minors) that B’Tselem believes didn’t take part in the conflict and Israeli soldiers’ use of civilians as human shields. According to B’Tselem, it has received only one serious response, in which the Judge Advocate General’s Office stated that it had ordered a Military Police investigation into the use of civilians as human shields.

“The extremely heavy civilian casualties and the massive damage to civilian property require serious introspection on the part of Israeli society,” states B’Tselem. And Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies recently wrote in the Christian Science Monitor, “Israel's victories are pyrrhic and reveal the limits of Israeli power and our own limitations as a people: our inability to live a life without barriers. Are these the boundaries of our rebirth after the Holocaust?”

Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights. He is also the foreign correspondent for the Middle East Times International (Australia).

The WIP is proud to present a free screening of the incredible documentary film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell in Monterey, CA on September 22nd - held in conjunction with the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS).

Pray the Devil Back to Hell chronicles the remarkable story of the courageous Liberian women who came together to end a bloody civil war and bring peace to their shattered country.

What: Free screening of the documentary film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell

When: Tuesday, September 22nd at 6:00pm

Where: MIIS, Irvine Auditorium, 499 Pierce Street, Monterey, CA 93940

This community event is part of a global movement to celebrate the UN International Day of Peace. Last November, we were so moved by the film that we invited Leymah Gbowee, a principal peacemaker in the film, to join us for our event, Women as Agents of Change in New York City. We hope you'll join us to watch a truly inspiring film that shows how each one of us can become a part of the solution to create a more peaceful and just world.

For more information, email at us at info@thewip.net or call +1 831 644 0116

To find a screening near you, click here!

The month of August has left me feeling deeply chagrined. Not only was it defined by a marked insanity, virulent hostility and lists of lies repeated verbatim so many times that the media came to present them as a legitimate point of view, but it will also be remembered as the month that progressive leadership caved.

Last year during the presidential debates, it seemed that we were going to at least discuss single-payer national health insurance. Quickly sensing that this was beyond the capacity of a nation so bitterly divided between right and left – and loathe to blow all of his political capital on one issue alone while so many remain to be tackled - President Obama soon began to talk of a “public option” as a compromise. By the end of August, it appeared the public option too might be sacrificed on the trifecta altar of bipartisanship, capitalism and right-wing paranoia. By the second week in September, we were on our way to yet another compromise on a compromise: a health insurance exchange in the private market. Like the children’s game of Chutes and Ladders, I’m starting to feel that every two steps forward toward social justice are accompanied by a sudden and debilitating slide backwards. Pretty soon- with the WOOSH of a final compromise- we’ll just be back at square one: Those of you who like your insurance can keep it, and the rest of you can kiss off.

It’s time to ask a serious question: what does it mean to be an American citizen? Are we just taxpayers obligated to fund the interminable “War on Terror” and ballooning Social Security/Medicare programs (for apparently ungrateful seniors who don’t even realize it’s a government program) with our decreasing wages but without the right to press for our own needs? Are we just consumers hunting for the best deal in a never-ending Darwinistic climb to the top of the economic ladder without regard to those whose heads we have to kick to get there? Or, are we a society that is finally prepared to acknowledge our mutual responsibility to one another?

Are we ready to recognize the fact that our capitalist system – while excellent at generating untold wealth for a few and a pretty decent standard of living for most – by its very nature creates cracks through which the most vulnerable fall? That poverty will always go hand in hand with the free market -and that therefore if we want to have this system then we have to provide a safety net? That one’s inability to pay for a disease acquired through no fault of one’s own should not be a death sentence – or a bankruptcy one? That rationing already exists in that we keep our doctors’ office lines artificially short by preventing nearly 50 million people from having access? That the desperate scavenger hunt for decent health insurance skews our life choices and limits our full potential? That the limiting of such potential and the increased burden to provide employee medical benefits are two factors hurting our economy? That when doctors are opting out of health insurance plans (my dentist and eye doctor have already left) that our system isn’t serving anyone but profit-hungry shareholders answerable to no one but themselves? That health care is the most essential of all human rights in that it affects the very right to continue living? And that disease knows no socioeconomic barriers but impacts us all?

Put this way, it seems so obvious. But then, I’m a progressive who believes in social justice and equality for all, so maybe it’s only obvious to me. As such, I thought the first eight years of my adult life – the malignant Bush years- were just a blip. Lately, I’m wondering if that’s the case. Democrats control the executive and legislative branches, and untold millions are suffering as never before due to the recession and medical bankruptcy. If we can’t create real reform now, then WHEN?

I was irritated with my wife. After waiting for several weeks to carve out some free time to go find a new set of night tables (her own night table had collapsed under the weight of books), we were finally on our way when my wife stopped to talk to a stranger near our house. Though the incident happened some months ago, I only understood its import this morning upon reading a poem by Jack Agüeros, a New York poet, which brought that event back to my mind. But I am jumping ahead, so let me backtrack.

I was walking with my wife, Silvia, to the bus stop when a young man passed in front of us. He was of probable East Indian descent, shabbily dressed and talking to himself, the last being not so unusual in and of itself for New York City. But what told me he wasn’t of sound mind was that on that frigid morning he was shoeless, his feet dirty and calloused.

Seeing his plight, my wife asked him, “Sir, do you need shoes?” The man looked surprised, and mumbled a response which my wife took as a positive answer. Upon hearing that, Silvia said to me, “Just wait a few minutes,” and turned back toward our house.

“What is going on?” I asked myself. “We are very short of time and my wife is going back to pick up some shoes for a man who probably wouldn’t realize if he had shoes on or not.” I was annoyed at her but didn’t have any choice but to wait for her. The man went to sit on a bench nearby. I decided to keep an eye on him, to make sure that he would wait for her and not try to walk away. I tried to engage him in conversation but was unable to. He obviously preferred to continue inhabiting his own world. How my wife was able to reach him escapes me.

Silvia’s trip was taking more time than I had anticipated and, at a moment when I wasn’t paying attention, the man disappeared.

“Well,” I thought, “that will show her that she can’t be a Samaritan all the time. …” I walked up the avenue and down and up a side street, but couldn’t see him.

Finally, frustrated, I retraced my steps and went back home to tell my wife what had happened. Just as I turned a corner, however, I saw her talking to the shoeless man. (He had gone back in the same direction as my wife.) She was handing him a pair of practically new shoes, part of a bunch that we had decided to donate to a homeless shelter.

“Most probably,” I thought, “he will now go and try to sell them.” I was wrong again. My wife’s generous thoughts prevailed over what I believed was my common sense. While sitting waiting for the bus we saw the young man walk by again, proudly wearing his new set of shoes, a smile on his face. It was the man’s pleasure as well as my wife’s unassuming kindness that I recalled upon reading a Jack Agüeros poem months later. In his “Psalm for Distribution,” Agüeros, a Nuyorican poet of the dispossessed, writes:

Lord,
on 8th Street
Between 6th Avenue and
Broadway
In Greenwich Village
There are enough shoe stores
With enough shoes
To make me wonder
Where there are shoeless people
On the earth.

Lord,
You have to fire the Angel
in charge of distribution.

The poem is set a few blocks away from where this incident took place.

César Chelala is an award winning writer on human rights issues.