“Are Iran’s Revolutionaries now Reactionaries? George Orwell would have understood. A fresh poll may be the only answer” (2009)

June 22, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

I was born in Tehran because my parents were Indian diplomats there, and I would love to go back to visit Iran someday.  Not right now though as the country seems to be  plunging itself into a new Revolution and yesterday’s Revolutionaries are today’s  Reactionaries in a way that George Orwell would have understood and might have predicted.  (Back in December 1982, at the American Economic Association meetings in New York City, a man looking surprisingly similar to Mr Mohammad Ahmadinajad approached me  after I had read a paper “Economic Theory and Development Economics” to a large audience, introducing himself as a member of the UN delegation of the new Islamic Republic, giving me his card which I never kept… a story for another time…)

It would appear to me that the right political course of action would be for the disputed poll to be cancelled — with the consent and indeed at the  statesmanlike initiative of its declared winner;  to be followed by a short interregnum for normalisation and a calming down of all tempers to occur; and then for fresh polls to occur within, say, two or three months, taking transparent precautions that such an ugly mess not be repeated.

Subroto Roy

see too

https://independentindian.com/2006/04/06/irans-nationalism/

https://independentindian.com/2009/09/14/irans-modern-cinema-a-must-see-for-those-wishing-to-make-war/

https://independentindian.com/2006/02/24/war-or-peace/

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