Celebrating Friendship: A Collective Tribute to Smitu Kothari Members of the Development editorial board remember Smitu Kothari, former member of the Editorial Board who passed away in March 2009, recalling the many dimensions he gave the board as a friend, as a thinker, activist and as a visionary. Wendy Harcourt Khawar Mumtaz Arturo Escobar Fatma Alloo Franck Amalric Marisa Belausteguigoitia-Rius Nermeen Shaikh Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Thierno Kane Continuing the journey Wendy Harcourt I first met Smitu Kothari at my very first engagement with SID in New Delhi in 1988. Since then he has played a hugely supportive role in my life, both as a dear friend and as a stalwart supporter in all that SID and the journal aim to achieve. His unexpected and untimely death in March 2009 was both a devastating personal blow and profound loss to the collective work of the journal as well as the SID family. I realized as I read all the tributes from around the world that his loss will be felt by many other friends and networks. We are proud to devote this edition of the journal to Smitu Kothari. We remember in this journal issue aptly entitled ‘Beyond Economics’, his deep commitment to social and economic trasnformation, his work for peace and justice among the poorest communities in India, his global activism, his intellectual insights and above all his friendship and tremendous capacity for joy. Smitu challenged many of us in the editorial board to keep true to the community voice, the goals of economic social justice and peace, and to face the full implications of the violence of development. Smitu in this way was full of paradoxes. On the one hand he was the dearest of friends, on the other he was the most honest of critics. He could celebrate life while working closely with the harsh realities of injustice. He was a global citizen and yet also a man of his community, whose greatest love was to sing, to cook and be with his family and friends. There are so many memories that I carry with me of Smitu in the dozens of places we met and schemed, wrote and spoke together. I always found myself, like so many others, warming to his intellectual wisdom, his delight in ideas and sense of fun in company. I always felt Smitu would just appear and disappear in my life, but was always there if ever I called, and it is painful to think of him not appearing once more with open arms brimming with new ideas, people I should meet, journal issues I should do.

Perhaps one of the most poignant memories of him is when he arrived, unplanned to the launch of the book Women and the Politics of Place, where I had written up an interview with him. It was in Bangkok in the midst of a large women’s conference. I had informed all the people involved in the book (it evolved out of a long project coordinated by Arturo Escobar and myself) but did not expect any but those at the Conference to show. Incongruously as I and one or two other authors assembled with the publisher for the launch Smitu appeared, smiling at my surprise and saying how could I not come? Somehow he was in Bangkok for another of our friends’ meeting (Smitu always spoke of his friends as if they were my friends, and in time they often were) and had made his way for two hours to be at the launch. After the speeches, we sat by the river savouring an hour together before he had to go, sipping beer and nuts, dreaming together of how we could continue the project, taking our belief in transformation from place to other communitites, bringing in more friends, contributing to the tide of change. That vision of Smitu’s, of taking vision and ideas and involving more and more people towards a dream of ecological, social and gender justice forged by friendship and understanding, he knows we will carry on. In friendship Khawar Mumtaz When I met Smitu Kothari for the first time at a dinner party in New Delhi, almost 25 years ago, I had no inkling that our paths would cross in the future and a deep and rich friendship would follow. The next meeting of any significance was in 1987 when I as a member of a group of seven women environmentalists visited India in an unprecedented trip organized by IUCN-Pakistan where we travelled by road visiting environmental activists in the foothills of the Himalayas. On our return to Delhi Smitu was among the organizations and individuals we met. His insights into the complexities of India’s environmental movement went a long way in explaining the country’s diverse issues and their social dynamics. I count the beginning of my friendship from this point. We found many things in common from the despair with the rapid destruction of the environment, to the pointlessness of the nuclear race, from India-Pakistan tensions and the hawkish mindsets of policy makers, to our love of classical as well as Indian film music. It was much later I discovered Smitu’s remarkable singing voice and his repertoire of old songs. Smitu was indeed an inspirational person with a very clear mind and a people’s perspective. His commitment to social movements was deep seated and strong. The two issues that seemed to fire him most were the denial of historical rights of local/indigenous people in the name of ‘development’ and conflict at the cost of peace. He was particularly passionate about indigenous peoples’ rights and connected it with economic globalization. I attribute a great deal of my understanding on this to Smitu. One of Smitu’s weaknesses, I wouldn’t call it a fault, was that he was passionate about too many issues and wanted to give his all to all of them, a physical impossibility at the best of times, and in the process did not always manage to fulfill what he promised. One such initiative was the volume that he conceived on internal conflicts in South Asia. He generated interest in the project, managed to get an international organization to support it and in the end the volume was published without his contribution. He would always admonish me for taking on more than I could cope with but was probably more guilty of this than me.

I would like to remember Smitu especially for a journey that he and a group of like- minded friends started under the SID umbrella forming SID-SAN which set as its task a volume on women in conflict situations in South Asia. The book, often referred to by the group of editors as ‘Our Book’ evolved as conflicts in different parts of the region changed their hues; the aim was to capture the liberating or empowering moment for women who get inducted into conflicts rather than coping mechanisms. In the course of the volume we met several times, had many discussions and disagreements, were frustrated at each others’ pace and ironically just when the volume was indeed near completion Smitu passed away. It is now dedicated to him and is on SID website. Smitu’s untimely and unexpected death has taken away a dear, warm and sensitive friend who was always welcome in my family and took a great deal of interest in my children and their lives. His departure leaves a void which would be difficult to fill – it was after all a space created over 20 years. Smitu and the many kinds of struggle Arturo Escobar I was fortunate to spend time with Smitu Kothari over a twenty-year time span in many places and at many types of events –in the USA, Europe, even once in Colombia. I count these opportunities among my blessings. I learned a lot from Smitu both intellectually and personally, since we always found time to enjoy ourselves and celebrate being together, often with a small group of friends. Like many others, I loved his singing. One of my fondest memories of Smitu’s is him singing Indian songs, or American songs, like the well-known ‘The Boxer’ and ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’, by Simon and Garfunkel, which he sang with my partner Magda and others at our house in Chapel Hill on a couple of different occasions. Grassroots resistance to development was central to Smitu’s intellectual and political work. Whether talking about the most recent developments in adivasi struggles, or the historical mobilizations in the Narmada Valley, or about peaceful non-violent resistance by communities against ecological destruction and in defense of livelihoods in so many parts of India, he always spoke with passion against injustice and with a great sense of hope and commitment to the advancement of those struggles. Far from naïve, he had a grounded belief in the spiritual, cultural, and material power of organized communities to achieve social transformation. Smitu and I were the only men participating in the ‘Women and the Politics of Place’ project that Wendy (Harcourt) and I co-organized with a marvelous group of largely women activists and intellectuals. ‘When people are displaced, the very cohesion and interdependence of community life is broken’, he wrote in his interview chapter in the resulting book Women and the Politics of Place. For him, the violence of development often implied the loss of entire cultural worlds. Conversely, as he wrote in the same piece, a politics of place is about ‘the terms of connection between people and between groups of people, other species, and the surrounding physical worlds. They are also about the terms of connection between local and larger places, both earthly and spiritual.’ I think this statement summarizes well Smitu’s fundamental concerns. How are people organizing against the displacement caused by development and modernity? How can ‘we’ (intellectuals, activists, academics, students) contribute to such struggles?

What do these struggles have to do with more direct forms of democracy, the defense of the commons, planetary consciousness, and the assertion of pluralism against fundamentalisms? In 1998, Smitu organized and presided over a ‘global dialogue’ on ‘Expanding People’s Spaces in the Globalizing Economy’, held at the Hanasaari Cultural Center near Helsinki. Convened by the International Group for Grassroots Initiatives (IGGRI), a network connected with the alternative development movement in the global South, the dialogue’s aim was to share accounts of popular responses to development and globalization and to discuss innovative experiences with alternative economies by grassroots movements. Over 120 participants from the five continents, the large majority from grassroots organizations or representatives of social movement networks, attended the call. The range of topics was vast, from Davos to the regeneration of local economies, from commodification and eurocentrism to the spiritual values and the emergence of countervailing forces, and from the ravages of globalization to a panoply of cases around community struggles, local currencies, women’s projects, cultural resistance, and so forth, all of which were seen as crafting people’s autonomous spaces. At one point, Smitu recapitulated the discussions of the ‘ten kinds of struggle’; these included from struggles of ‘the human spirit’ over values and of ‘wisdom over information’ to struggles for ‘respect of natural cycles’ and democracy. On the last day, at the closing ceremony participants assembled in a circle on the lawn, in the middle of which a mandala was drawn. People were asked to come forward to fill up the mandala with leaves, pebbles, wild berries and flowers and to share stories. Everybody held hands in gratitude, and then we all departed with wishes for outer and inner peace and harmony. Doubtlessly, as he did with our project on women and place and the entire IGGRI network, Smitu had infused the Finnish event with his vision, wisdom and compassion. As I write these lines, I feel his spirit reaching out to us all from that circle on the lawn and from our many meetings, illuminating our own journeys, summoning us to enliven our spiritual lives and to contribute to healing the earth and the human community. To You Smitu Fatma Alloo You went without a goodbye Smitu for goodbye it is not. Your spirit of justice in the wake of globalization is what will stay with us. I remember when I met you in one of these board meetings which was planning an international conference. You questioned the internationalism of it all when you realized that Africa was not represented in the programme. In your lectures to students you always spoke of Africa. When we visited Oldvai in Arusha, where the first fossil of a human being was found, you were emotionally moved. You said you felt the power of being. The richness and vastness of Africa you said made you believe that this is the Continent which would make a difference one day when its peoples realize its Pan African unity. You always tried to build a South-South network including the South of the North in any mobilization that mattered globally. Through you I also experienced the power of thought and consistent struggle in the face of all odds. You believed in thought as a liberating factor in human development and coupled with it the spirit of movements which moved you. You had your battles on

many a front - global, local and personal. It is rare that you find a man who struggles at a personal level and cries from the pain it creates. Smitu in dire days you would cry and you would sing. I will not forget when I witnessed you crying when a Dalit was telling his story. It was the kind of crying when one is in pain - like when you lost your mother. And then you sang-you sang for Emma, your daughter and your soul. You loved to sing and you had the voice for it too. You sang for pain and you sang for joy. When you first came to Zanzibar you were so overwhelmed by the beauty and the way it really was a globalization of cultures, as you put it. What did you do? You just started to sing a spirited and happy Bollywood song as we walked through the narrow streets of Zanzibar. You were so surprised when passer-bys joined in. You did not know that Bollywood is so popular here in my place, as you found out to your amazement. In you I found that versatility of a leader for whom nothing is impossible and no-one is above anyone. To a child you bent down and you became a child. To us women, your sensitivity to our issues and the time and effort you took to be there was so unusual. There were times we argued over contentious issues but your strength was you did have the capacity to think through things and change. Similarly you never hesitated to take us on when you disagreed. Like I said it is a special quality in a man. I suppose that is what endeared you to us - your friends. You actually taught me the deep meaning of friendship. You demanded from friendship as you gave to it also. You were the glue who held us together. Now you are gone but you have left us with that glue and here we are gathered through the journal Development paying tribute to you Smitu. I can almost picture you smiling through your eyes. It is difficult to envisage that you are gone but I already miss you and our conversations on the internet -to share things that inspire me and to hear back by return e-mail from you. Thank you my dear, dear friend Smitu for letting me be part of your life. In Tribute to Smitu Kothari Franck Amalric For a few years, between 1995 and 2001, I had the chance to work closely, albeit at a distance, with Smitu Kothari within the frame of the Society for International Development Sustainable Livelihoods Programme and, in parallel, of International Group for Grassroots Initiatives (IGGRI). One major idea that I recall from working with Smitu is that material poverty is not the only form, nor even perhaps the main form, of human suffering and injustice in our world. To see social injustice as greater than economic poverty remains a radical position to hold within international development circles, and one which placed Smitu squarely among the radicals in development. And yet, perhaps because it was assumed that in holding that position Smitu was bearer of a Gandhian and therefore utopian legacy, not everyone understood nor could accept, that Smitu’s point was fundamentally an empirical one. I heard him speak to many audiences, from journalists in Delhi , to development practitioners in policy making circles in The Hague , and every single time his primary and main concern was to speak about people, women, men, children and communities. He spoke about the whole picture, their daily lives, their sufferings, their livelihoods,

and, of course, their struggles, their fights, their resistance, as well as their hopes, vitality, and innovativeness. Another dominant theme in his work was how development, carried out in the name not only of modernity and state-building, but also in the name of poverty alleviation, was spreading violence and suffering. He spoke of the suffering of people uprooted from their land and environment, the suffering of people’s whose way of living is denigrated by public officials, the suffering of people who are denied due recognition. Emblematically, Smitu co-edited the journal issue on ‘Violence and Development’. But the fundamental ideas I take from Smitu that I appreciate even more now, was not about development per se. It was his epistemological position, namely that is extremely difficult to know how people actually experience injustice, what it is that women and men judge unjust in the world they live in, in particular from a distance, and in particular across cultures. From afar it is tempting, even unconsciously, to project on other persons what we think they would find unjust and act on the basis of this assumption. Smitu was always prone to shake up any simple answer development practitioners were ready to give to that question. And that made him, indeed, a ‘radical’, in the sense of someone who always returned to the root principle, that of listening to what the people have to say about their own experience of suffering and injustice. Smitu, living this principle, naturally became a great a traveller: here and there, always on the move, always ready to pay a visit to a movement, to attend a meeting or a conference. But he was neither a tourist, nor a global development jetsetter. I think of him as a visitor of places, people and communities, seeking and insufflating conviviality while cooking and singing. And what he brought to all was friendship, a profound and communicable belief in the value of genuine human relations, joy, inspiration and courage. Indeed, time with him was always full of joy. Who can speak for the people? Smitu Kothari’s Voice Marisa Belausteguigoitia I began work with SID and specifically with its journal editor Wendy Harcourt now 12 years ago. My understanding of international work, transnational organizations, their power, function and limitations has grown thanks to both the committed, creative and intelligent work of Wendy and the contact with intellectual activists like Smitu Kothari. To be ‘like’ Smitu Kothari means something quite unique. I will try to convey what it meant for me to be in contact with him in the midst of international gatherings and formal intellectual activities. India and Mexico can communicate fluently because of many different factors, one being the amount of culture, history and political activism living aside the perversity of poverty, and the other the dryness of humour dwelling around abyss of necessity. My relation with Smitu was smooth, intense, fluent and marked by both painful irony and humour along with a shared frustration at the deep corruption and complexity related with our countries and the themes that interested us both. During my first years in SID I worked with Wendy and our group in a project which analyzed cyberspace and the concrete function of voice and body in virtual space. I was trying to put together this incredibly complex grammatic around the disembodied nature of cyberspace and the issues of communication and political work. I gravitated to the question posed by Gayatri Spivak if the subaltern (or what is called the grassroots in development) speak? In exploring whether the disenfranchised had a voice, Smitu

helped me to understand that the reality of the lived material presence or body through the voice must be always present. All the speeches, discourse, the talking and writing made by intellectuals or activists needs to be supported by the materiality of the lived reality of people in the struggle, a voice that emanates from their lives such as those from a song, such as Smitu’s own voice when he sang songs from many realities, particularly the songs of resistance and joy from villages and popular music. The body in this sense means the material aspect of activism -the base or consistent ingredient that held together- any struggle made with and for the disenfranchised. Listening to Smitu, when he sang and when he spoke from this sort of materiality, I understood the paradox of working in cyberspace. It means virtually to create the presence of both body and voice in a disembodied and disseminated space. The body is present where the commitment appears, the voice emanates where passion and soul meet. Our task is to write with the body (not just the mind), with a strong sense of offering clear, believable, material views and intervene with a voice in ways that stitched together what had been separated and severed in the development process. Smitu helped me to engage both voice and the body- materiality with a consistent connection of the reality of people from below- in my intellectual work. Crucially he helped me to give clarity to the complex work of the committed intellectual. Through the conversations we held during the years, and as I observed and enjoyed Smitu’s own voice, both the wisdom of his writing and the beauty of his songs, I began to understand the link between deep immersion in community lives, intellectual work and political participation. He drew for me new borders around the issues of activism and scholarly space. But even as his voice grew in ascendant and descendent spirals, his body carried huge amounts of emotional weight. He was always tired in a very deep way. His face held an intense repertory of gestures that conveyed a strange mixture of sadness, nostalgia and pain, but also tenderness and an intriguing kind of joy. Voice and body in Smitu’s life, not withstanding his teachings, went separate ways. That was the last gift he gave to me. It is ok not to be integral, not to be one. We can live and say goodbye in pieces, because his body disappeared but not his voice. Smitu’s songs, the quality of his voice, its true sonorous tones, are with me. It stays persistently reminding us of the impossible: to be fully present, to sweat, to stress, to develop gestures of pain and joy when writing or trying to speak for others.

Meeting Smitu Nermeen Shaikh I first became aware of critiques of development when I worked with Tariq Banuri at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad. It was there that I was first introduced to Lokayan and to the work being done by Smitu Kothari. The experience was, and remains, an intellectual and political gift. Reading Smitu, and eventually having the privilege of hearing him and meeting him, gave me a language and a sensibility to orient myself in a world where so much devastation, so much human misery, was presented as necessary, as collateral damage in the name of progress. The

community he fostered, deeply committed to alternative narratives of development, freedom, and democracy, indeed to reclaiming these words from their malign and bankrupt common usage, made it imaginable and even believable that another world is not only possible but necessary. It was a gift that remains an enduring presence. Many years later, when I met Smitu again at a conference, I remember asking him over lunch why exactly it was that big dams are so injurious to the communities in which they are built. And right there, sitting at a small lunch table, surrounded by other participants, Smitu, completely instinctually and with a clarity I am still amazed by, drew a diagram on a napkin illustrating the costs of such projects, and explaining, in great technical detail, and in a matter of minutes, why the benefits were often negligible relative to the damage done to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. What was extraordinary about this episode, like other occasions when I heard him speak in a public forum, was the clarity with which he spoke, passion suffusing his every gesture and word. He had a profound commitment to justice together with an ability to render often complex and difficult – if for no other reason than their heterodoxy – ideas in both simple and powerful words. And I learned all this from the few hours I was fortunate enough to spend in his company. And not just that: equally remarkable of course were his incredible charm and generosity, which became obvious within minutes of encountering Smitu. Another vivid memory: we are all walking in the rain towards our hotel after dinner in the Hague and he sings old Hindi film songs in his magnificent baritone – his voice is stentorian, yet beautiful and mellifluous – graciously submitting to a request for one or two of my favourites, and we walk along, enchanted. Over the years, the urgency associated with Smitu’s work has only grown – exponentially in fact. With the stubborn, relentless triumph of the global capitalist machine – all the more perverse in the face of such monumental evidence against it -- and the inhumanity it breeds, there is a desperation, a longing for those who see the darkness of the present, the catastrophe that appears increasingly certain, and can speak with conviction and name things for what they are, explain what is actually occurring in the name of humanity. Smitu’s was such a voice. And it is in Smitu’s light that we tread in his absence. Vignettes from the Ranchi Roundtable Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt Smitu Kothari was – and I cannot believe myself typing this in the past tense - one of the most progressive and consistent amongst the activists raising their voices against the neo-liberal anti-poor agenda of privatization and globalization. It is ironical that he suffered a stroke whilst Smitu was at a meeting of the Delhi Solidarity Group and Himalaya Niti Abhiyan to discuss strategies for strengthening the people's struggles in Himachal Pradesh against displacement, mining and environmental destruction. I use the term ironical, because when I first met Smitu in 2002, it was in a meeting against the displacement of indigenous communities (adivasis) by large-scale mining projects in Jharkhand.

In 2002, with fellow activists from Prerana Resource Centre based in Hazaribagh, I had co-ordinated an Oral Testimony Project to record a number of testimonies of indigenous men and women who were displaced or about to be displaced by large coal mining projects in North Karanpura coalfields area in Jharkhand. This mineral-rich area in eastern India has been a home for a number of adivasi communities for generations, an area that has seen the shrinking of forests, degradation of land, decline in traditional occupations and livelihoods, changes in culture and family structures. The adivasi communities have been unable to cope or adapt to these changes which had undermined their well-being and forced them out of their traditional lands or into illegal activities such as scavenging for coal. We collated the testimonies into a Hindi booklet and a set of Brochures in English language, and organized in July that year in Ranchi a Roundtable meeting with a number of 'stakeholders'. Since we needed to ‘add weight’ to this meeting, and the grievances were bitterly verging on conflict, we were looking for someone whose voice would add some kind of sanity. We were aware that Smitu was actively involved in ecological, cultural and human rights issues, vigorously pursuing development-induced displacement, people’s governance and social-environmental movements as some of his core concerns. He had by then for many years been a vocal supporter of the struggle of the thousands of adivasis, farmers, labourers, fishing communities and all the project-affected people in the Narmada valley and articulated their concerns at various fora both within India and across continents. Smitu came from New Delhi to participate in that Roundtable on my invitation, although we had never met before, and he might not even have heard of me. It was enlightening meeting and knowing Smitu. I was familiar with his sharp insights and ability to articulate thoughts into excellent writing, but had never listened to him in a meeting. Meeting him in person and listening him talk - in his typical gentle and non-aggressive but firm manner - have till date remained one of the highlights in my activist life. His kind eyes shone with sympathy and love when he spoke to the Santhal displaced by the collieries and left to fend for himself, and there were a few people who had either given the testimony besides those who had recorded them. The camaraderie he brought into that meeting was unforgettable - several Coal India managers had come to 'make the official point' about the crucial importance of carrying out large-scale mining operations in that meeting. Some of the officials present in the meeting, thanks largely to the sensitive handling by Smitu of situations that threatened to become explosive at times, went back somewhat changed and at least alerted to other perspectives that exist on these projects. Even within NGO workers, opinions differed about how to deal with such rapid expansion of large-scale coal mining and other so-called 'development' projects. Smitu’s invaluable contribution was in particular to those diverse people's movements and resolves to come together, commit themselves fully and be united to the cause of the people. We could not indeed change the way things were right away, but the process of engagement was invaluable to those who were involved in it. The Ranchi Roundtable was a small intervention, but it was indeed one of the first one to put forth people’s perspectives to the official ears, and more importantly, it could become so effective partly for Smitu's loving and kind presence in Ranchi. Smitu’s passing away gives us the opportunity to think of his contributions in rethinking 'development' in India, in particular in the mineral-rich, forested areas and indigenous-owned lands, and to collectively forge a national and global alternative development that is socially just and ecologically sane. In conclusion, I would quote a tribute by the

Narmada Bachao Andolan activists about Smitu, that a man like him ‘continues to be a source of inspiration not just for people's movements and struggles in India, but also to voices of dissent and alternatives across the globe.’ Words of silence Thierno Kane Every time I took my pen to write some words about Smitu I felt an emptiness and was unable to express my feelings and my thoughts. The only way I found to reconcile my heart with my brain is to offer the following ‘words of silence’ which will resonate as familiar to a friend, a brother , a great thinker full of humility, bringing always with him conviviality with a formidable capacity of listening, because it is now the time for me to listen to his whispers because I have for too long debated and argued with him. This poem from a famous Senegalese writer, Birago Diop, translates my present feelings and thoughts and I want to share it with you and with all friends. I am taking the risk and daring to translate some lines: ‘ Listen to the Whisperings Listen more often to Things than to (human) Beings The voice of Fire is sparking, Listen to the Water whispering, And through the Wind blowing Listen the Bush sobbing The Whispers from Ancestors. Those passed away never left, They are in the Shadow lightening, They are in the Shadow darkening, Those passed away are not underneath They remain in the Tree quivering, They are in the Wood moaning, They are in the Water flowing, They are in the Water sleeping They are in the hut, They are in the Crowd,…. Those passed away are not gone away They are in the woman’s womb They are in the child crying, They are in the Burning Wood roaring Those passed away are not underneath They remain in the Fire extinguishing, They are in the wild Grass weeping, They are in the Rock sobbing, They are in the Forest, they are in the Home, Those passed away are not gone away….’ Taken from the poem by Birago Diop translated by Thierno Kane