by
S Faizi
on
21 Aug 2011
While
condemning the short detention of Anna Hazare and his colleagues, it is
nevertheless pertinent to understand what the Magsaysay Award really
is, especially in the wake of the United States’ official support to the
anti-corruption agitation led by three Magsaysay awardees (Anna Hazare,
Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal).
Washington
is a government that creates and protects systemic corporate corruption
across the world; a military machine that is at perpetual war with the
militarily weak countries of the global south; a regime that is at the
root of most of the corporate loot in India; a regime that is rapidly
making the planet uninhabitable; a regime to which Manmohan Singh’s
government is readily obedient.
The
game plan might look confusing - for Manmohan Singh too is America’s
best friend - but it is simple enough if one looks at the preceding game
plans. For example: Mossad and the CIA trained the Sri Lankan military
and the LTTE at the same time (and called both of
them ‘monkeys’). Then there was America’s strategy of fiercely
manufacturing jihadi terrorism in Afghanistan to fight the USSR, and its
subsequent use of the presence of the jihadis as an alibi for occupying
and destroying the country.
Now let us come straight to the three Magsaysay awardees.
Late
Ramon Magsaysay was a former president of The Philippines. But the
award, though in his name and in his honour, is not an official award of
The Philippines government, but one that is funded and run by the
Rockefeller Foundation, out of Manila to be sure, with some local faces
accommodated on the Board. And its youth award (given to Kejriwal) is
funded by a bird of the same feather - the Ford Foundation.
Cultivating
and promoting ‘society leaders’ who one way or the other stand up for
American ‘values’ and help remove the social space for those who
challenge American hegemony that is at the root of a multitude of world
problems, is the long term purpose of the award. It can also be used for
short term goals, such as precipitating a domestic crisis. [The current
face-off at Ramlila Maidan could be said to represent such a
manufactured crisis].
Magsaysay
is also given as reward to those who stand for American interests. As
an example, consider the invaluable collection of India’s rice
germ-plasm assiduously built at the Rice Research Institute, Cuttack,
which was taken away by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
located on the banks of the beautiful Laguna lake about two hours drive
from Manila.
The
Rockefeller Foundation was instrumental in establishing the IRRI for
the western agri-business corporations, to have a firm grip on rice
cultivation in Asia. And the man who helped IRRI deprive India of its
precious rice germ-plasm collection was later made the head of IRRI and
rewarded with the Magsaysay [a rich purse], and subsequently made
chairman of the award committee.
The
name Ramon Magsaysay did not come to the Ford Foundation by accident.
If it was to honour the values of freedom and commitment to the people,
they should have gone for the name of Jose Rizal, the most revered
Philipino leader, but they did not do that. Ramon Magsaysay steadfastly
stood for American interests both in The Philippines and the southeast
Asia region. The 1953 presidential election that Magsaysay won was
entirely manipulated by the CIA to put him in that position. Nick
Cullather of Stanford University says in his book Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States-Philippines Relations, 1942-1960,
‘The US flagrantly intervened in the 1953 election. The list of CIA
dirty tricks, by one account, included money laundering, arson, and
blackmail, but ironically these depredations fail to convey the scope of
the interference. The election was all about the United States’.
Magsaysay
was considered a great asset by America in fighting communist
movements. He happily worked for America to set up the dangerous SEATO
(Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty) military alliance, although
it had hardly any takers within the region (only the kingdom of Thailand
and the vassal state of Pakistan).
America
unsuccessfully used him to spoil the 1955 Bandung Conference that led
to the birth of the Non-Alignment Movement. He refused to go Bandung
(like his mentor John Dulles,
the US Secretary of State) in deference to American interests, but sent
a representative who argued for American interests, giving lone company
to the US envoy there. I wonder how many of our civil society groups
and journalists who get excited at the very mention of the Magsaysay
Award know how Ramon had attempted to malign the image of Jawaharlal
Nehru (and NAM) by describing the Non Aligned Movement as a springboard
of communism, because they were angered by Nehru’s criticism of SEATO.
Ramon
Magsaysay is honoured by the US for nothing but his ‘courageous stand
against communism in the Far East’. And the Rockefeller and Ford
Foundations’ award in his name is meant to promote that old purpose in a
sustained and discrete manner.
The
three Magsaysay awardees, owning multiple well-funded NGOs, live up to
the expectations of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations; and now the US
government has officially chipped in, though it is simultaneously
trying to distance itself belatedly in the face of a strong official
reaction from New Delhi.
Where
do we, the real people of India, the owners of the Republic and the
authors of the Constitution, stand, thrown as we are between a US bent,
colonialism’s apologist Manmohan Singh and the Three Magsaysay
musketeers?
God, if there is one, save the country.
Dr S Faizi is an ecologist specialising in international environmental policy; his email is biodiversity@rediffmail.com
Editor’s Note:-
It
has been brought to our notice that although many reputed publications
and websites (see below) have laudatory references to Anna Hazare as a
Magsaysay Award winner, the official website of the Magsaysay Foundation
does not list him as such. Hazare is however, the recipient of an award
by CARE, which is part of the American establishment and often embedded
with the military on occupation missions. Its headquarters are in
Atlanta, Georgia.
Kiran Bedi received the Magsaysay Award in 1994 and Arvind Kejriwal in 2006.
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