The Hindu : Music, march and message as WSF meet ends

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 22, 2004

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National

Music, march and message as WSF meet ends

By Our Mumbai Bureau

MUMBAI, JAN. 21. The six-day World Social Forum concluded today with a march, a meeting, and music. Many of the thousands who attended the WSF, held in a suburb of Mumbai, marched to the city's Azad Maidan for the closing ceremony.

As thousands of delegates from different countries passed through the 7-km route raising slogans against war and globalisation in different languages to the accompaniment of music and dance, people stopped their vehicles to take a look and many came out of offices and other establishments to witness what was perhaps an unprecedented political procession. "Why are so many foreigners protesting here in Mumbai," was the repeated question people asked one another as they scrambled to get copies of pamphlets and papers being distributed by the marchers.

Delivering the keynote speech, the former President, K. R. Narayanan, said that "this movement is one of the most significant in history. To fight globalisation, you need to fight the way Mahatma Gandhi fought with the strength of the masses. He was the first to show the way to non-violence and this has also been the method of this new movement. People's power is a new factor in international politics."

The Pakistani human rights activist and lawyer, Asma Jehangir, set the tone for the conclusion by declaring that "we want to tell the powerful forces in the world, that we don't fight with tanks, with cluster bombs or with atom bombs. We fight with our resolve, and with our pens. Victory will be ours because our resolve is based on principles."

Ms. Jehangir drew an enthusiastic response from the crowd when she spoke out against war and against the American intervention in Iraq. "We are not for terrorism. We are against terrorism. We are the people who repeatedly warned that `don't let the genie out of the bottle'." The United States, she said, is "like a big fat angry giant. Its policy is driven by fear, keeping people ignorant in the name of fear." She demanded that the U.S. leave Iraq and be held accountable for the war. "We want the U.S. to have a pact with the world that it will not go to war against any country unilaterally," she said.

A special message from the former South African President, Nelson Mandela, was screened. He said: "We owe future generations a better world in which every individual is respected. This world will soon become a reality."

The question on the minds of many people who have read and heard about the WSF is whether there was an outcome. Explaining the process, Chico Whitaker from Brazil, who is part of the organising committee, told The Hindu: "The WSF is not a movement. It is an incubator giving birth to new initiatives for change in the world. The outcome is not one but hundreds of outcomes as each of the groups here has been able to plan out new actions and initiatives."

He said that the most important aspect of the WSF in India was the participation of popular movements, such as those representing Dalits, farmers and tribals. "In Brazil, too, we have exclusion but not at the level you have here. It was beautiful to see the way all these people participated."

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