By Keya Acharya
BANGALORE, India, Apr 4 2003 (IPS)

As the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq rages into a third week, India’s scientific elite, located in this global science and technology hub, is leading efforts to pull a wide cross-section of society into a growing, nationwide movement against the conflict.

So far, anti-war protests in this country of one billion people have been scattered across various cities and student, and India is yet to see the mammoth anti-war rallies seen in several other countries in the region.

Sabyasachi Chatterjee, a professor at Indian Institute of Astrophysics, attributes the rather sluggish national level response to the ”central government’s ambivalence towards this war as well as the popular notion that war may not be bad thing in that it enabled India to beat back an armed invasion across the Indo-Pakistan border in recent years”.

Five years of rule by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has seen India weaponise its nuclear capability and take on an aggressive policy towards neighbouring Pakistan, refusing to engage with it in talks to end a dispute over Kashmir, and bringing the two countries to the brink of war last year.

But even in this environment, Chatterjee is confident of building a mass, anti-war movement with better impact than before – especially with the war showing signs of being prolonged and Indian leaders, both ruling and opposition, increasingly speaking against it.

The southern city of Bangalore, capital of Karnataka state, has many advantages over other Indian cities in being the hub of protests in this high-technology, Internet-linked age.

It is home to a thriving information technology industry and boasts the presence of some of biggest international names in the business.

It is also the headquarters of fiercely nationalistic, state-run organisations like the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which thrived in spite of being the target of technology sanctions imposed by the United States after India first exploded a nuclear device in 1974.

”All this means that many people here have had an exposure to the hegemonistic ways of the western world on the one hand and effective methods of mobilising protest on the other,” Chatterjee said.

In other words, there is a mix of scientific and technological prowess and networking skills with political awareness of the effects of power play by the western world.

Most middle-class families in the city are able to access the Internet, available cheaply at home or at ‘Internet cafes’ – and this allows protest groups to mobilise people in Bangalore faster than anywhere else in the country.

Anti-war candlelit vigils, symbolic blood-donations or artists’ protest-paintings are now a daily affair in Bangalore.

Last week, several groups, including artists, poets, software professionals, journalists, women’s groups and prominent scientists almost spontaneously gathered in protest outside the British Trade Office, which represents Britain’s biggest official presence in the city.

Surprised officials were seen berating security guards on their complete lack of intelligence on the protests.

”Since the protest outside the British Trade Office, we have been inundated with calls expressing solidarity from various organisations and individuals,” said P V Unnikrishnan, a volunteer with the People’s Health Movement (PHM).

Unnikrishnan, who visited Iraq with a humanitarian medical team in February and returned with first-hand reports on conditions there, emphasises peaceful actions to stop the war. ” We cannot identify ourselves with any kind of violence while protesting against the violence of war,” he said.

Unnikrishnan argues too that attempts to provide humanitarian aid to Iraq at this point would be tantamount to acceptance of the war. ”It is also impractical because of the U.S. checks on aid into the country.”

A ready strategy has been to highlight at rallies the economic profits from the war for both the United States and Britain.

Apart from oil and territorial interests, says Unnikrishnan, U.S. corporate arms trade rose by 64 percent while Britain captured 20 percent of the 900 billion dollar global arms trade since the Gulf War of 1991.

”Every 24 hours 30,000 children die of preventable diseases. The world needs just nine billion dollars to prevent this,” he argued.

Young scientists from Bangalore’s prestigious Indian Institute of Science, who have formed a social-action group called ‘Concern’, are campaigning for a boycott of the beverages Coca-Cola and Pepsi on campus. They say these firms contributed to the election campaign which brought U.S. President George W Bush to power.

The Coke-Pepsi boycott has been simultaneous elsewhere in India.

Hotels in the commercial capital of Mumbai are avoiding these products amid news reports of the two companies withdrawing their commercial advertisements in the wake of these developments.

In neighbouring Kerala state, Dr Ekbal (one name), the vice chancellor of the University of Kerala and a PHM leader, says that the mood is so hostile to Coke and Pepsi that they may soon ”become extinct” there in the next few weeks.

”The move has certainly generated good debate”, said Parthasarathy Ray and Gyanendra Kumar, research scholars in the sensitive area of molecular biophysics. ”We are very upset at the total disregard of public opinion by the two countries (the United States and Britain), added Ray.

Several scientists have pointed out the vulnerability of developing countries like India to what they call the rather ill-defined ”biological weapons” arguments trotted out by the U.S. and the western world, and suspect that these are used to limit the growth of technology.

”We all use viruses and pathogens in test-tubes in various laboratories,” explained biophysicist Gyanendra Kumar. ”Tomorrow scientists in research laboratories can find themselves being accused of producing biological weapons.”

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