Debating the Maoist challenge

In the public domain, a frequent argument is taking place to find out whether the extremism of Indian Maoists is an act of terrorism or not. In fact, there is a very thin line which divides the Maoists extremism from other typical forms of terrorism. Mindless mass killing, brutal extermination of detractors and critics, destruction of state property are among the many common features of the terrorist doctrine that fits well with the Maoists ‘revolutionary’ strategy. Maoists, like the terrorist groups cling to a fanatic socio-political and cultural belief, prefer supreme loyalty from their cadres and favor absolute totalitarianism. Both have trained themselves to use sophisticated weaponry and have grown more adapted these days to pathological killing. Both believe in oppositional terror and try to achieve it by intense violence. Where religious terrorism is inspired by religious dogma, Maoist political terror is inspired by a rigid form of political dogma. Both have practiced mastery to cunningly utilize rival mainstream political groups against one another to pursue their goal while the mainstream political groups stupidly think the reverse. Both have grown to be a lucrative media catch and perfected the art to make use of the extreme double standards of the fourth estate. Reluctant to renounce violence from a deliberate choice of applying terror tactics to force political concessions, Maoism in India is incessantly getting synonymous with terrorism.

The gun-cult

To neutralize the strengths of conventional law enforcement forces and capture areas from political parties who have the potential to raise an unyielding challenge to them, Maoists are frequently applying tested terrorist methods of macabre violence. The Maoist guerrilla squads perpetrate ambushes on security force convoys, kidnap and gruesomely assassinate individuals from poorly protected police stations in remote regions, plant booby traps of homemade improvised explosive devices or chic landmines, carry out a programme of individual annihilation of grass-root workers, supporters and sympathizers of rival political parties after terming them ‘class enemies’ or ‘renegades’. Most of their victims, notably, belong to the poor section of the society.

Their petty-bourgeois cheer-leaders and intellectual sympathizers believe that there is nothing wrong in this gun-cult as it is only a ‘consequence of mass anger’ and so cannot be labeled as ‘premeditated terroristic attack’. They consider this politics of terror as a socio-economic phenomenon, created impulsively as a response to a particular social and economic situation. There is nothing wrong in this risky belief but as Bob Dylan has once said “People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.”

Democracy at Gun point

A lot has been said about the ‘admirable’ development works that the Maoists have put up in the dense forests of Bastar in Madhya Pradesh and Dantewada in Chhattisgarh where they are running a parallel government — the Janathana Sarkar (People’s Democratic State). Here, the Maoists have gone all out with their experiment to build a model classless society. The Janathana Sarkar is an elected body but ‘Landlords, anti people hierarchs, stooges of exploiting government and anti revolutionary forces are disqualified to participate in elections.’ As we learn from the lofty Maoist document ‘Policy programe of Janathana Sarkar’ (Source) the People’s Democratic governments have deployed a robust revenue collection system to run their expenses, distributed lands confiscated from landlords to poor and landless peasants. It has formed a forest protection committee to protect the natural livelihood of the tribals, running schools to raise political consciousness and scientific knowledge among the masses. To deliver summary justice to the oppressed masses, people’s courts reinforced with ‘new principles of justice, class line and mass line’ often tries and punishes ‘landlords, hierarchs, heads of the ruling class parties, exploiting government officers, police, paramilitary, military forces, goondas, anarchists, thieves, deceivers, conspirators, police agents’. To successfully control every aspect of the lives and livelihood of the tribal inhabitants and to maintain its absolute authority, the Janathana Sarkars has built up a considerable guerrilla base equipped with sophisticated arms and ammunition.

Elite bleeding-heart Maoist sympathizers have been provided enough space in the liberal bourgeois media to continuously drum on their admiration and paint a romantic picture of the ‘constructive programmes’ of this illegal Maoist governments which is run by the ‘principles of democracy’ where ‘individuals shall be committed to the government, minority to the majority’. They are ecstatic about how the Maoist governance has made the oppressed tribals feel proud of their identity and has brought back their self-respect. How the Maoist gunmen have protected them from the exploitation and harassment by local feudal lords, village chiefs, forest and police personnel, businessman and contractors. How the Maoists have empowered the marginal tribal farmers by teaching them agricultural skill, affiliated tribal families into cooperative farming, organized them to volunteer for digging tanks for irrigating land and breeding fish and has provided primary education and health care facilities to fight illiteracy and endemic diseases like malaria and diarrheoa. Above all, the sympathizers are delighted to describe how the Maoists have reignited the tribals against state sponsored atrocities and endowed them with guns — the ultimate symbol of power. The tribal voice under the Janathana Sarkars, they exclaim, is the real voice of people’s power. Here the voice grows out, literally, from the barrel of gun.

Are the Maoists really interested about the genuine problems of the tribal inhabitants of these regions or they are using the tribals as a pawn in their game? Do the Maoists represent the entire tribal population of these regions? These remain pungent questions which does not have an easy answer. The tribal heartland of India was not really selected by the Maoists because they had any special affection and empathy for the underprivileged tribals. It was a strategic choice for its geographical advantages. To build up a safe base and getting prepared for their so called revolutionary war, the Maoists required a secured hideout for themselves which will be inaccessible to the state security forces. There could be no argument at all that the tribals have remained the most neglected people in India and has encountered endless state apathy during both pre-independence and post-independence time. The tribal regions are among some of the most backward regions of the country. The Maoists have simply exploited the situation by seducing a major section of the inhabitants to achieve their own gory interests. Improvement of tribal life has little significance in the broader context of the Maoist strategy. The secluded tribal lands are important for them as self-sufficient base areas, for consolidating their strength to later expand and unleash ‘protracted People’s War’ against the Indian state and subsequently overthrow it.

What is actually going on inside these jungles? How do we, who live outside the ‘liberated zones’, learn about the effectiveness of these ‘classless’ Maoist governance when much of their functioning inside the jungle hideouts is invisible? Fortunately, we have two important sources of information.

The ‘stinking’ dissenters

“The Central task of the Indian revolution … is the seizure of political power. To accomplish this Central task, the Indian people will have to be organized in the people’s army and will have to wipe out the armed forces of the counterrevolutionary Indian state through war and will have to establish, in its place, their own state - the People’s Democratic State” – from the CPI (Maoist) document: Strategy & Tactics of the Indian Revolution.

The first unambiguous source of information is the several fact-finding reports by civil liberties groups and accounts of social activists and NGO organizations mostly comprising the liberal and radical left. This is a special mix of ‘aware and awake’ people who essentially believes that ‘people have a right to defend themselves against state violence’ and certifies Maoist violence as ‘the very last option of a desperate people pushed to the very brink of existence’. These are the people who validate the killing spree of Maoists by citing that ‘Hindu mobs led by the Bajrang Dal and the VHP had killed more people than the Maoists’ and unquestionably believes that the Maoists ‘don’t kill without a good reason’. They feel that the Maoists cannot lay down arms as it will only allow the State to crush them. These are the people who believe that the people's courts of the Maoists ‘only existed because India's courts are out of the reach of ordinary people’ and love to talk persistently about ‘police repression, the arrests, the torture, the killing, the corruption’. These are the people who inform us about how state governments, from an absolute paranoia of the Maoist specter, are branding every dissenter as Maoists and thus pushing activists as well as ordinary people ‘to take up arms and join the Maoists’. These are the aware people who knows about ‘the dangers of trying to extract a simple morality out of individual incidents of heinous violence’. These are the sensitive and concerned citizens of India who turn blind when the Maoists carry out cold blooded murder of CPI(M) activists in Bengal or behead police inspector Francis Induwar in Jharkhand. These are the people who get extremely angry when the Vanvasi Chetana Ashram in Dantewada was demolished by the state forces because this ‘neutral outpost’ had virtually became the base camp of city-bred outsiders to exchange useful information and support with the Maoists but do not get angry at all when the Maoists blow up schools. These are the same group of people who talks about human rights violation during every action of state security forces but maintain absolute silence when the Maoist and their frontal organizations unleash mindless violence on common people.

These Indian dissenters are the champions of the oppressed, who couldn't help looking (and smelling) cheap! These are the people among whom Arundhati Roy has found that ‘a humane heart still beats’. (Source)

‘Maoists are part of the story’

The second source is the reports and features produced by the neo-liberal Indian corporate media. Duty bound daring scribes frequenting into the Maoist heartland bring out titillating news stories. Account of the ascending life of a once timid tribal and now a fearless Maoist guerrilla is described in those stories in graphic detail. During every crisis period in their movement, the Maoist leadership has invited the ‘dear pressmen & TV channel hoisters’ from the ‘democratic and free’ Indian print and electronic media into their ‘liberated zones’. The numerous investigating reports that the journalists carry out later, serves both the Maoists and the media bosses. The Maoists get free publicity which they think elevates their public image. The media gets steady readership that facilitate the manufacturing of public consent. These reports highlight why tribal youths want to join the PGA (People’s Guerrilla Army) and fight against the police. Why the tribal populace think that the Maoists are their only savior. It also helps to generate the myth of the Maoist style ‘development’. It creates a thriller effect in the mind of the readers and viewers as the concept of dissent is always attractive to the petty-bourgeois conscience. A section of the media has developed a generic habit of romanticizing the Maoists. There is a definite reason behind this romanticism. It is not to display their love for the Maoists but principally directed against the mainstream Left, to lower their significance in people’s mind. Thus, the compassionate media puts top Maoist leader couple Kobad and Anuradha Ghandy on a pedestal and asks in a melodramatic voice: how did the daughter of a high profile lawyer of Bombay High Court or the son of a top Glaxo executive come to choose a life of struggle and hardship? (Source) If we accept the media stories as true, we will discover that every Maoist leader was a first-rate student and at the same time ‘extremely aware of what was happening around’. They automatically get radicalized while studying in elite colleges and learn to shed tears for the poor. Responding to the righteous call to fight for the oppressed, they soon become gun carrying revolutionaries.

Vincent Brossel, head of the Asia desk of Reporters Without Borders (RWB) has defended the role of the ‘free’ media concerning the Maoists by saying, “When you have a civil war on terror groups it is the right of the press to cover both sides. The Maoists are part of the story.” (Source) RWB is an international NGO that advocates freedom of the press. The group is reputed for having ‘strong links with Western intelligence agencies and has focussed its energies on countries such as Cuba and Venezuela.’ (Source) RWB is also alleged to be on the payroll of the U.S. State Department. (Source)

There is a lucid pattern in which these stories are woven and planted. In fact, the corporate media serves its own agenda when it purposely turns into a Maoists mouthpiece. The transformation obscures the genuine democratic struggles that are going on in the fields and factories all over India. Mainstream Left parties have always criticized left extremism for dismantling of democratic movements. In this aspect they are absolutely right. The Maoists and the corporate media work hand in glove and share a common understanding to actually demolish the scope of democratic resistance.

To acquire a true picture of alternative system of the Maoists governance, should we then rely on these sources as credible and truthful?

'To live outside the law you must be honest'

At present, these self-styled protectors who boast about safeguarding tribal wealth from ‘capitalist development’ and ‘corporate expansion’ have absolutely monopolized their control over mineral and other natural wealth in the regions. They are involved in illegal harvesting like growing poppy crop and smuggling of minerals and forest products through criminal syndicates of the timber and mine mafias. The revenue collection system, disguised as ‘taxes and donations from the people and fines from the anti people elements’, is their main source of income that comes from extorting huge amounts of royalty from the traders, contractors, mining corporates and big industries operating in those regions. While indoctrinating the tribal people against the Indian State, the Maoists at the same time had successfully built up dubious relationships and deceitful understandings with mainstream political parties. In Andhra Pradesh, local politicians have found them handy to secure electoral gains. The same nexus was evident during the Jharkhand assembly election in 2005. Recently in Bengal, the Maoists are working as second fiddle to Mamata Banerjee and her cohorts.

On the eve of Operation Green Hunt — the Indian State’s massive military counteroffensive plan against them, the Maoists are feeling the urgent need to forge a strong support base ‘at every level possible’ which includes their ‘honorable’ sympathizers from the intelligentsia as well as mainstream political parties. Their offensive against the ‘brutal’ state forces needs to be carried out ‘in close coordination with, and in support of’ these mainstream sections of the Indian society. The Maoist leaders are definitely not fools but have cunning political brains. They know that to take up ‘wide propaganda exposing state terror and state-sponsored terror’ and evoke sympathy among the broader masses, the help and support from the babble mouth elite sympathizers, the ‘liberal’ media and petty-bourgeois radicals will give them the necessary propaganda mileage. By lending opportunistic ‘tactical’ support to petty-minded political groups to influence petty politics, by inciting an anarchic situation through their murderous politics, they want to divert attention from their surreptitious activities. Bengal is a paradigm case where reactionary political forces like the ‘useful idiots’ of the Trinamool Congress has volunteered to help the Maoists just to pathologically oppose the principal partner of the ruling Left Front — the CPI(M). So, it is not a surprise when we hear the shrewd CPI-Maoist politbureau member Koteshwar Rao a.k.a. Kishanji openly declaring Mamata Banerjee as the next Chief Minister of Bengal! This friendship will immensely help the Maoists to keep an escape corridor open for their ‘brave’ guerrillas to turn their tails and flee from the imminent State offensive.

During the show of might between state forces and the Maoists, the hapless tribals will be caught in the crossfire and left to bear the maximum brunt. Their already wretched life will further get shattered. This is going to be the most disturbing part of the event.

Web Resources:

1. Ajai Sahni: ‘Naxalism’- The Retreat of Civil Governance

2. Debasish Chakraborty: Who Are The Maoists Working For?

3. Nirmalangshu Mukherjee: Open Letter to Noam Chomsky

4. V Balachandran: An ideological adversary

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Maoist’s in Lalgarh: the plot unfolds

Lalgarh continues to burn. Over the last few days, there were continuous news of violence, brutal killings and large-scale arson reported from there. The victims of the atrocity were mostly local tribals who were also known to be activists or supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).They were forcefully driven out of their homes and coolly gunned down. Several CPI(M) party offices with houses of local party leaders were selectively targeted, torched and demolished. In front of the CPI(M) party office, the corpse of an agricultural laborer and CPI(M) worker Shalku Soren were seen lying under the sun, draped in a blood spattered sheet, for days. No one from his family has dared to perform his final rites. In the name of ‘people’s resistance’, this unprecedented brutality and vandalism was spearheaded by the Pulishi Santrash Birodhi Janashadharaner Committee or People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA). At present, state police force along with central forces are jointly engaged in a fierce gun battle with the PCPA activists. It is out in the open now that the PCPA has been shaped, maintained, controlled and strengthened by the Maoists who are leading the Lalgarh resistance from the front.

Lalgarh is situated in West Midnapore district, just 200 km away from Kolkata. In spite of the fact that within a stone’s throw distance of Lalgarh, the Jindal Group has acquired 4500 acres of near-barren land to build up a steel plant at Salboni, there is no credible complain of ‘forceful land grab’ against the Bengal government here. Like Singur and Nandigram, some ‘concerned’ activist groups had habitually opposed the steel project but were unsuccessful to create enough ruckuses as 4200 acres from the notified land was ‘unfortunately’ owned by the government’s State Animal Welfare Board and the rest was purchased directly by Jindal from local landowners through a three tire compensation policy. The ‘Salboni Package’ was complimented all over the country as the best possible model so far for acquiring farmland for industry in India. In Lalgarh, there are no reports that the CPI(M) party men has unleashed a reign of terror on poor and harmless villagers wearing ‘police uniform but with chappals’. Here, no ‘eyewitness account’ has informed us that villagers are brutally murdered by the CPI(M) goons and then ‘put in gunny bags, loaded in trucks and transported to unknown destinations’. There is also no such report about mass raping of women. No witness has testified before a ‘fact finding committee’ that ‘the legs of a small child were torn apart’.

Then why this brutal outrage is surfacing in and around Lalgarh? Is it possible to explain this ‘people’s rage’ by linking it with the ‘thirty two years of massive state repression’? According to a honorable central minister who also happens to be a Trinamool Congress leader, the violence is a spontaneous ‘outburst’ of the oppressed people against the ‘atrocious’ CPM rule. Furthermore, who can disregard that the CPM has a chronic tendency to tag all popular unrests against their dismal rule with the Maoists? Didn’t they try to circulate the same theory during the great Nandigram uprising? Didn’t they do the same in Singur? “Where are the Maoists?” the honorable central minister candidly asked in a recent television debate. Is it not true that the Maoist presence in Bengal is a myth created by the CPM? The honorable minister in all probability was not aware at that time that Maoist leaders have surfaced before the media to claim their robust authority to the movement. The justifying tone of the minister sounds as if he was actually enjoying the brutal killings of the CPI(M) men! He must be in a calculative mood and expecting that Lalgarh will provide some sort of continuity to the electoral and political gains his party has reaped from the very similar episodes of Nandigram.

There are indeed many similarities between Nandigram and Lalgarh. The politics and modus operandi of the agitation is similar. In both the places, rumor and disinformation were spread among locals to agitate and mobilize them. In both the places, a rainbow organization had sprung up rapidly to lead the agitation. In both the places the agitators took over the state administration to establish a free zone. Roads were dug off, several places were blocked by felled trees to resist any further state incursion. In both the places, indigenous weapons brandishing mob emerged as a symbol of the resistance. Both the so-called ‘popular movements’ were backed up by social activists, NGO’s and city dwelling intelligentsia who came on the street to protest the ‘state repression’ and ‘brutal use of force’. In both the places, there were a significant presence of women and children among the agitators who formed the front rank as ‘human shields’ while armed Maoists have positioned themselves in the back layer to instigate police firing. To deliberately create an anti-people image of the CPI(M) and the state government, a deceitful propaganda model was crafted to establish that the state government has particularly targeted the minority Muslims in Nandigram. The same model is applied at Lalgarh where the long oppressed tribals are shown as the victims of state government’s oppression and dispossession. It is now starkly evident that in both the places, the agitation was and is fuelled by a combined force of the right-wing Trinamool and the ultra-left Maoists. In both the places, the CPI(M) party and its workers were the single target.

The answer to the question why Lalgarh has become a killing field of CPI(M) workers is plain and simple. The CPI(M) is the lone target because it is the only party in that area that has the potential to confront and resist the deadly Maoist insurgents. It is the daring local leaders and workers of the CPI(M) who has created the biggest hurdle for the Maoists. They are the only one spoiling the Maoist’s grand design to systemically extend influence in the entire Jangalmahal region of Bengal. These sincere workers who are rooted deep with the daily struggles of the people are the real strength of the CPI(M). The Maoists have understood this strength and therefore has taken up the horrific task to selectively kill individual leaders and workers of the CPI(M) and detach the people from the party by enforcing a reign of terror against them.

The Janashadharaner Committee which is roaming and clumping all over Lalgarh for the past few months were formed as a protest against ‘rampant police atrocity especially on women and school children’ after the state police had raided Lalgarh and its adjacent villages in November, 2008 and detained some locals for having suspected Maoist links. The police action was carried out after the landmine blast on the convoy route of chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee who was returning from Salboni after laying the Jindal steel plant foundation stone. The wire connecting the landmine was found to be originating from Lalgarh. The mastermind behind the attack on the chief minister is suspected to be Maoist action squad leader Sasadhar Mahato, younger brother of the former Trinamool and present PCPA leader Chatradhar Mahato. Along with Maoist sympathizer groups like the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) and Lalgarh Andolon Sanhati Mancha (Solidarity Forum for Lalgarh Movement), the Trinamool Congress had also extended its clandestine support towards the PCPA from its birth and stimulated the ‘unique form of democratic politics’ in Lalgarh against the “government’s long neglect of the tribal people”. Trinamool chieftain Mamata Banerjee was seen several times in the recent past to share the same dais with Chatradhar Mahato. ‘Humanitarian’ NGO groups, social activists and intellectuals with ultra Left undertone were seen to be busy providing moral, intellectual and financial support to the PCPA and ‘steadfastly persevered’ the movement ‘on a path of peaceful show of unity’. The Maoists, who had already set up a strong foothold in the region, were already waiting in the wings. The PCPA incited the tribals for an administration boycott and prevented the police from entering the area. All these developments were happening prior to the Lok Sabha polls. The Left Front government, taken aback by the political consequences of Nandigram were coerced not to take direct action and tried to resolve the crisis through negotiation and talks.

The villages in Lalgarh block could not cast their votes in the Lok Sabha polls due to constant threats from the Maoists. Soon, the area completely went out of hand from the state administration. Lalgarh virtually became a liberated zone of the Maoists. The mainstream media started its systemic propaganda with illustrated stories of people’s resistance and also about how the Maoists have initiated the alternative developmental work inside Lalgarh in the past seven months through their rural governance programme to ‘built at least 50 km of gravel paths, dug tubewells and tanks, rebuilt irrigation canals and are running health centres, with the help of local villagers in Lalgarh. Sporadic killing of CPI(M) leaders and workers were taking place which was made known as ‘people’s upsurge’ against CPI(M) ‘atrocities’.

Just some time after the Lok Sabha election results were out, the situation of Lalgarh erupted with its real face. Planned butchery of CPI(M) local leaders starts. Exciting images of enthusiastic PCPA activists hammering down the house of a CPI(M) leader brick by brick surrounded by drum beating tribals were beamed by TV channels. On June 15, Maoist leader ‘Bikash’ came out into the open to deliver a chilling interview, “On November 2, our plan was to execute Buddhadeb Babu. If West Bengal wants Buddhadeb hanged, who will hang him. It will be us of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army.” Standing back facing TV cameras with an AK 47 slung on his shoulder, the real leader of Lalgarh ‘movement’ announced to the literally dumbfound looking journalists, “The ground here is already ready and waiting for us. A child is about to be born and we are playing the role of the nurse who will deliver it”. Next day, in his second media interaction, Bikash also told to the Bengali news channel Star Ananda that “Killings, mass rapes, violence are the doings of Buddhadeb babu’s party. What we are doing is counter-violence.” But Bikash tried to indirectly deny any association with the Trinamool by saying, “Trinamool and CPI(M) are the two sides of the same coin.” At once, Trinamool friendly media picked up this information and propagated repeatedly to invalidate the CPI(M) claim that “Trinamool Congress workers are in cohorts with armed Maoist groups”. Bikash’s identity has been revealed by the Bengal Home Secretary. He is none but Sasadhar Mahato; the younger brother of Chatradhar Mahato.

After Bikash, it was the turn of Koteswar Rao alias Kishanji, the head of CPI(Maoist)’s central military commission and a politburo member in charge of Bengal, Jharkhand and Orissa to address the media. Suspected by the administration to be present at Lalgarh to spearhead the insurgency, Kishanji in his interview with the news channel NDTV has demanded an apology from the Centre and the Bengal government for waging a ‘psychological warfare’ against the tribals. Contrary to the remarks of Bikash on the Trinamool-Maoist connection, Kisanji has meanderingly appealed to the Trinamool chieftain ‘to break her silence’ and repay the Maoist’s contribution in Nandigram by assisting them in Lalgarh. In an earlier interview with the Times of India, Kisanji had spelt out how the Trinamool has armed them to fight in Nandigram. Even Chatradhar Mahato, in a careless moment had acknowledged the same fact.

It seems that the Maoist leaders are finding it increasingly difficult to keep the truth of a Trinamool-Maoist nexus concealed anymore. Earlier, in an inter-party letter, the Maoist leaders had already expressed their desire to “amass all anti-CPM forces in Bengal” and have appealed to their members to “involve the ruling class parties in this anti-CPM project to the maximum extent possible”. In the same letter, the Maoist leaders had asked their comrades to “strengthen relation with the leader who is leading the Singur movement from the front”. Fearing that her carefully veiled truth is getting uncovered by the ‘block-head’ Maoists, Trinamool chieftain Mamata Banerjee has promptly distanced herself and her party from the Lalgarh movement. Impatient to ‘portray a statesman-like attitude’, she has worriedly responded on the issue by saying, “I don’t support that (the Lalgarh violence). It is our collective duty to maintain law and order”. She has announced that two years ago her party has ‘expelled’ Chatradhar and made a wild claim that the Maoist’s are in fact a CPM plant to prevent the growing Trinamool influence in Bengal. “Buddhadev himself is the Maoist” was her reply to the CPI(M) allegation! (For a recent update on the Trinamool-Maoists nexus, see Maoist leader names TMC, Mahashweta as allies)

In Lalgarh, the Maoists have again made it clear why they are no different than any terrorist group. But till they were working covertly under the PCPA banner, their linkage with the PCPA could not be believably proved by the administration. It was easy for the Maoist backers to romanticize the Lalgarh movement in every possible way and candidly support the movement through sympathy soaked media coverage and armament-logistic-legal-financial helps. But by coming out in the open to face the media and announcing their leadership role in Nandigram and Lalgarh, the Maoist leaders have placed them on the horns of a dilemma. The avid sympathizers are showing signs of frustration that the consequences of this ‘stupid’ revelation of ‘hegemonic power’ can derail their well crafted plans. Now, when the truth about Maoists presence in Lalgarh cannot be dismissed anymore, a section of the sympathizers are trying their best to project the Lalgarh violence as a result of the growing discordance between the Maoist central leadership and ‘grassroots Maoists’ and harshly criticized the Maoist leadership as a ‘threat to the various democratic mass movements’. (Source) Their prime concern now is to justify that the Lalgarh movement is basically a ‘non-violent struggles of the people against unjust development policies in the state’ that is suddenly hijacked by the ‘self styled warriors against the state’. Can we humbly ask the ‘democratic mass movement’ propagators why they have waited so long to raise their voice to oppose the Maoists role in the Lalgarh resistance? Following the same logic, will they then condemn the so called Nandigram resistance also?

There is another section that is continuing to shield the Maoists by saying, “…the Maoists are rightly concerned about the objective historical necessity of the moment. This has prompted them to boycott elections and more ruinously adopt the exclusive path of protracted war. It is true that Maoists do not necessarily enjoy staying underground, and it is the brutality of the state that initially forced them into the forests.” (Source) Off course, this dogmatic section does not face any dilemma. Through their intellectual jargon and twisted facts, they are keen to establish that the mindless violence in Lalgarh was “…a spontaneous outburst of popular anger which has resulted in the torching of a CPI(M) party office.” (Source) They have condemned sending in paramilitary forces into the area and guaranteed continual support to the ‘historic in form and content’ movement in ‘every possible way’. They are supporters of mindless killings and completely blinded by the concept of armed uprising.

It is just a matter of days before the state and central joint forces will flush out the Maoists from Lalgarh. The real test for the state government will start from here. Instead of banning the Maoists, confronting them through political and administrative means seems to be the right solution. The government has to address the genuine grievances of the extremely poor and underprivileged section of the region with a compassionate determination. They must also remain extremely alert about the evil designs that will continue to proliferate in the coming days.

Image Courtesy: hindu.com, ndtv.com

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Cyclone Aila, its aftermath and a biased discussion about an ‘unbiased’ media

Sitting distanced from Bengal and following the sui generis coverage of the Cyclone Aila after effects in the Bengali TV channels is a fascinating experience. The tragic incidence has emerged as the prime media story of the moment, promptly filling the void created by the just concluded Lok Sabha polls. The cyclone that hit the Bengal coast on Monday, 25th of May has left a massive trail of destruction in different parts of the state. The scale of destruction and the suffering of the effected people were unprecedented. As per official reports, 137 people have lost their lives in the catastrophe. Nearly two lakh others were left homeless. While the worst hit districts were South and North 24-Paraganas in South Bengal, Cyclone Aila has also left its disastrous impact in the North Bengal districts particularly in Darjeeling Hills where at least 28 people have lost their lives. In Kolkata, three people were killed when huge trees fell on buses, cars and auto-rickshaws, roads were blocked, many electric poles were keeled over snapping overhead wires. In several parts of the city, power and water supply were severely disrupted.

The days after

In the Sunderbans delta zone, gigantic waves caused by the cyclone have destroyed around 400 kilometers of embankments in Sagar, Pathapratima, Basanti, Gosaba, Sandeshkhali and Hingalgunj, flooding hundreds of the villages. 54 major and smaller islands and the lives of over 40 lakh of its inhabitants were severely affected in these areas. The floods has razed or damaged countless houses, washed away seeds and killed the livestock. Brackish water entering farmlands has ruined crops and wiped out all stocks of freshwater fish and shrimp. Village after village lay submerged. Affected people are living with acute shortage of drinking water, food and shelter. Fears of an outbreak of waterborne enteric diseases loomed large as rotten carcasses of farm animals were floating in the surrounding rivers and creeks. According to experts, Sunderbans has never been hit by such a destructive storm in the last three decades.

The world's largest independent conservation organization World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) was working in Mousuni Island of the Sunderbans for quite some time in partnership with WWF (Netherlands), Hewlett Packard and GTZ to increase the adaptive capacities of the inhabitants from cyclones and tidal surges. By taking up climate adaptation strategies and infrastructural facilities to protect the island's inhabitants, WWF (India) had also set up a Climate Adaptation Centre here, with an electronic Early Warning System to warn villagers of oncoming disasters. Cyclone Aila’s wrath has washed away the entire work done by WWF (India) in Mousuni.

Apart from the human tragedy, the cyclone and subsequent floods has badly affected the mangrove forests of Sunderbans and presumably caused a sizable damage to its animal life by sweeping away a large number of highly endangered Bengal tigers, crocodiles, wild boars and spotted deer. It will take several weeks to assess the actual extent of the damage only after the water level recedes from the area. Alarm bells are ringed by environmental activist groups. A Greenpeace spokesperson has expressed caution that “the destruction caused by Aila was in consonance with the predictions made by scientists, who had warned that storms would become more frequent and more damaging due to climate change.” The spokesperson has also said that, “…domestically, India must take ambitious action to curtail emissions of carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas which is causing climate change), by adopting mandatory, ambitious energy efficiency and renewable energy targets, and creating fiscal incentives for the same”. (Source)

The response

The Bengal government’s response to the cyclone devastation was gradual. To gear up the relief and rehabilitation work, chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee immediately deployed five ministers in the affected areas. Relief operations delayed to start as local communication systems were found to be paralyzed and many areas inaccessible by the impact of the cyclone. The army and Border Security Force personals were called in for carrying out rescue operations and air dropping of food packets in the inaccessible terrains. The government set up over 100 relief camps to temporarily shelter 50,000 effected people. While at the ground level rescue and relief efforts gradually gathered its momentum, it was almost inevitable that there will be administrative shortcomings in reaching adequate relief to certain remote areas as the scale of the disaster was massive and the numbers of victims were countless. The administrative loopholes in relief distribution remained a matter of grave concern to the government and have swelled harsh criticism from different quarters. Even as the state finance ministry sanctioned 61 crore rupees for relief operations, the funds available with the state government were grossly inadequate to cope up with the situation. Stressing the need for a centre-state joint effort to tackle the damage, the state government has urged for 1,000 crore rupees central assistance from the Natural Calamity Contingency Fund and also has demanded for declaring the disaster as a national calamity. The chief minister has also appealed to all political parties to rise above narrow politics and work hand in hand to provide relief to the distressed people.

But where the main opposition party is Trinamool Congress and the main opposition leader is no other but the ‘famous lady’, the country’s newly appointed Railway minister, the lofty call was expected to fall on deaf ears. How can her party work along with the CPI(M), the obnoxious ‘Stalinist’ party she had recently thrashed in the polls and won 19 parliament seats from the state? And who’s Buddhadev Bhattacharjee anyway? Didn’t the poll verdict confirm that the people have wholeheartedly supported her adamant approach of going up against everything the present government does? Eyeing the 2011 assembly polls, she has immediately tapped the popular grievances to blast off the state government for ‘nonexistence’ of any disaster management system throughout the 32 years of ‘misrule’. As if elsewhere in India, disaster management systems are working splendidly. She seemed, or pretended, to be unaware that the term Disaster Management System was introduced into the country’s administrative terminology barely seventeen years ago; fifteen years after Left Front came to power in Bengal.

Alleging the state government for careless utilization of central funds, she has demanded that the centre should not assist the Bengal government in relief and rehabilitation. On the pretext that no relief was reaching the affected people, she floated her alternative ‘PM to DM’ proposal: central relief should be directly handed over to the Panchayats bypassing the state government. As the Panchayats in most of the affected areas of South Bengal are advantageously under Trinamool’s control, the raison d'être behind her alternative proposal was targeted to reap maximum political advantage through relief distribution. Quite naturally she was upset when central finance minister Pranab Mukherjee met Buddhadev Bhattacharjee to discuss on the cyclone relief issue. As her alternative proposal was annulled by the central ministry, her party leaders and workers remained by and large aloof from any relief work. Instead, local Trinamool leaders were more interested and active to create obstacles in the ongoing relief and rehabilitation work and together with the friendly journalists were busy plotting effective plans to disrepute the government. Only after relief materials reached the affected areas from the Railway ministry, Trinamool leaders have jumped into their business.

The ugly media circus

Cyclone Aila has once again uncovered the ruthless anti-CPI(M) face of the mainstream media establishment in general, and the Anandabazar Patrika group (ABP) in particular. Setting a new low in journalistic sensationalism, the ABP group reporters are full of activity to spread disinformation based on half-truth evidences, primarily targeted against Buddhadev Bhattacharjee and his party. The carefully manufactured news items were selective in nature but regardless of validity, were supported by facts that cannot be easily separated from the fabrications and were presented in a ‘hit and run’ way – by making a brief attack and then dashing off from it without answering the subsequent response. To associate disinformation with authority and point up its trustworthiness, the news channels continuously ‘inventing’ exciting news and presenting them through the lingo of their own ‘experts’. Star Ananda, the ABP group’s ‘unbiased’ 24 hour news channel is an undisputed leader in this aspect. Brushing aside all journalistic ethics (if such a thing really exists), the channel has even started name calling and ridiculing rival news channel 24 Ghanta which do not follow their prescribed line of reporting. After all, 24 Ghanta is the ‘CPM’s channel’ stupid!

During Buddhadev Bhattacharjee’s visit in Aila hit Basanti, ABP group journalists had manufactured the sensational ‘imprisonment’ story. A group of local relief distribution workers were shown as ‘forcibly caged’ into a shed ‘against their wish’ for nearly two hours by overactive police and administration who had considered them as a ‘threat to Mr. Bhattacharjee’s safety’. An editorial in ABP group’s English daily The Telegraph had further articulated that the actual reason behind the imprisonment was to prevent them from “…confronting Mr. Bhattacharjee with their version of the truth of how relief operations were being mishandled in the area.” (Source) Star Ananda made it a major piece, uninterruptedly telecasted the ‘cage’ image for hours and promptly arranged a lengthy discussion on the topic. Surprisingly, the ‘cage’ was so tightly locked and guarded that the channel’s cameramen were allowed to enter inside and shoot this sensational footage of captivity for the viewers!

When the chief minister visited the cyclone effected Hingalgunj of North 24 Paraganas, he had to face ‘the wrath of the victims’ who had also ‘heckled and jeered’ him for inadequate supply of relief. The ‘hungry and angry cyclone victims’ shouted at the chief minister, “You are an inefficient chief minister. You deserve a garland of shoes. What have you done for the development of the Sunderbans in the last five years?” The angry ‘villagers’ asked the chief minister during an interactive session why a poor country like Bangladesh can build concrete embankments and the state government had failed to do so despite enjoying uninterrupted power for more than three decades. What the ‘angry villagers’ didn’t know was that ‘concrete embankments’ had feebly failed to protect Bangladesh from the devastating wrath of Aila. In fact, the condition of the Bangladesh Aila victims was so bad that Heather Blackwell, the NGO group Oxfam's Bangladesh representative called it a ‘humanitarian crisis’.

The ‘furious cyclone victims’ then heckled and abused the 75 years old local CPI(M) legislator Gopal Gayen at the Madanmohan Vidyapith relief camp and smeared his face with mud. The next day, the mud spattered face of the legislator was published in newspapers all over the country decorated by an incredible caption: ‘How does it feel?’ Not a single line were published anywhere by the worshippers of democracy condemning the attack on a senior legislator whose own house, situated in one of the worst affected areas was lying submerged for days. (Source)

Inspired by their homemade propaganda, a columnist of The Telegraph wrote, “The people were angry with not just the administration’s rather casual response to the human suffering, but also with the long years of official indifference to their plight.” (Emphasis added) The columnist continued, “Such anger erupting in the Sunderbans and in the chief minister’s presence can only mean how it is extending beyond ideological or partisan confines.” (Emphasis added) The columnist finally delivers his real message, “But the change in Bengal is noticeable…Bhattacharjee and the CPM are now less popular with the rural masses…” (Emphasis added) (Source) Buddhadev Bhattacharjee’s visit was termed by Star Ananda as a ‘VIP Picnic’. The media brotherhood roared in accordance: if the security of a chief minister becomes more important than relief distribution, if distribution workers are kept caged, then there is no need for the chief minister to visit the affected areas. Let him sit home. His visits are hindering the relief process. Amazingly, enlightenment struck the ABP group to raise the ‘VIP Picnic’ issue only after the ‘famous lady’ and three Trinamool central ministers had finished their respective visits to the cyclone hit areas. When the ‘conscience keeper’ Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi later visited the humble victims of Sandeshkhali, the same media reported about an ‘altogether different public mood’. Cyclone victims who has lost all that they possessed gave the Bengal Governor a ‘warm welcome’, little girls strewed flower petals before him. A shaken Governor was seen to amiably ask a woman in tears ‘if the child in her lap had eaten’. The reporting has turned Sandeshkhali into an almost surreal land, inhabited by surreal people who in the midst of agony can magnanimously strew flowers on their illustrious guest!

There is an alternative version of this rousing incident that came from Ganashakti, the CPI(M) mouthpiece. (Source: June 4, 2009 Issue) According to Ganashakti, the basic plan to heckle the chief minister was hatched by the ABP reporters. Blessed by their management, the reporters joined with local Trinamool leaders in a neighborhood club ‘Tarun Sangha’ in the early hours of that eventful day and fine-tuned their plan. Hingalgunj became their perfect executing ground as the area is considered to be a Trinamool Congress stronghold. The Trinamool leaders were taught how to stage a ‘media friendly’ demonstration in front of the chief minister, in the crudest way possible, involving women armed with brooms and shoes. The news and images will then be publicized as ‘public fury against the chief minister’. The Trinamool leaders perfectly acted according to the ABP authored script and helped to manufacture the breaking news: ‘Struck by Aila, survivors jeer Buddha, call him inefficient CM’.

The CPI(M) mouthpiece’s version could have been easily dismissed as a cliché CPM style defense under severe media criticism. But this time the daily has struck directly to produce an authoritative proof to support their claim. Ganashakti published an image of the chief minister’s interactive session in the Madanmohan Vidyapith relief camp and convincingly identified five ‘cyclone victim villagers’ – all of them were local Trinamool leaders. Throughout the incident, this gang of five was the most invective protesters who had flung ‘hard questions’ before the chief minister. None of them were cyclone victims; none of them were living in relief camp, none of them were hungry. The attack on CPI(M) legislator Gopal Gayen was also perpetrated by the same group. But no matter what evidence or logical arguments are offered, it is CPM manufactured news after all. A piece of news is considered 'credible' only when it appears in the ‘unbiased’ media.

Why the ABP group has gone berserk to involve itself into such a depraved act? In their own words, the initiative was undertaken to ‘provoke a widespread eruption of popular rage’ against the ‘impotent’ state government administration. (Source) The key intention behind this media circus was to act as proxy to the ‘famous lady’ who was away from the epicenter to attend her ministerial obligations in New Delhi. While the Trinamool chieftain and her henchmen were too busy celebrating their portfolios, their media friends has taken up the task to counteract the positive impact of the chief minister’s visit by any means. It was therefore their moral obligation to establish that the chief minister was sternly discarded by the cyclone affected people. They have realized that this out of the blue situation has provided them a wonderful chance to intensely exploit public resentment against the ruling Left Front and the CPI(M). Systematically they are trying to build-up an atmosphere of discontent and sustain it till 2011, for the final assault. Beating the Stalinists in Bengal is no more a pipedream. In any case, the Stalinists are in the verge of losing their power and the glory!

A concealed truth

The all out media surge against the Left, particularly against the CPI(M) obviously lead to the suspicion that the media might be working hand in glove for a much greater plan designed by their imperialist bosses. Remember the former US Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker’s testimony about how the Central Intelligence Agency had carried out a clandestine operation to topple the democratically elected Communist government in Kerala? Howard B Schaffer, the author of Bunker’s biography Ellsworth Bunker: Global Troubleshooter, Vietnam Hawk, has disclosed in the book that, “…the election results rang alarm bells in Washington. This apparently involved agency funding for political demonstrations organized by the Congress party and other opposition groups that were designed to create a law and order situation.” Sounds familiar? Former US ambassador to India Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s autobiography A Dangerous Place has further revealed how agency funds were poured in to help the Congress Party in Kerala and Bengal to cut off the communists who were clear favorites in the elections.

Successive US governments have a long history of extensively using the CIA to interfere in the internal political matters of various countries if considered detrimental to the US interests. Do we have to believe that the continuous eruptions of mayhem, lawlessness and violence in Bengal are spontaneous events? In the current global state of affairs, it is impossible for the US to remain impassive about a strategically important country like India. Only a stupid will believe that the US has signed the Indo-US nuclear deal to solve India’s power crisis! In their notorious intelligence game, one of the most efficient devices is the journalists who can serve the US interests under an institutional cover – the Fourth Estate.

Former Washington Post reporter, the legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein had exposed in his Rolling Stone cover story ‘The CIA and the Media’ how journalists had secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency. Bernstein wrote, “Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services – from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters … who found that their association with the Agency helped their work… and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.” (Source)

Do the journalists go on working for the CIA on their own? According to Bernstein, “…contrary to the notion that the CIA insidiously infiltrated the journalistic community, there is ample evidence that America’s leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services.” What about the ‘opinion maker’ columnists? Bernstein writes, “…a dozen well known columnists and broadcast commentators whose relationships with the CIA go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources. They are referred to at the Agency as ‘known assets’ and can be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks.”

Bernstein continues, “In the field, journalists were used to help recruit and handle foreigners as agents; to acquire and evaluate information, and to plant false information with officials of foreign governments.” Bernstein further elaborates, “…During the past twenty-five years, the Agency has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers – both English and foreign language – which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives.” (Emphasis added) The CIA is believed to have directly owned of subsidized “…more than fifty newspapers, news services, radio stations, periodicals and other communications facilities, most of them overseas. These were used for propaganda efforts, or even as cover for operations. Another dozen foreign news organizations were infiltrated by paid CIA agents.”

However, in response to public disclosure of CIA’s use of journalists in undercover operations, the agency has scaled down the program but continued “to ‘welcome’ the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists”.

Daniel Brandt, founder of NameBase, the web-based cross-indexed database of names that focuses on individuals involved in the international intelligence community once asked, “How can one distinguish between news and propaganda when the overlaps and interlocks are so pervasive?” According to Brandt, “…the collapse of socialism and the centralization of domestic and transnational media, suggest that the CIA now has everything well in hand”

We wrap up the section with a wise Daniel Brandt comment: “…the larger problem is that the media is owned by the ruling class. With the increased media centralization of the last twenty years, their lock on the masses is now so complete that when they maintain an appearance of objectivity, it's only out of habit.” (Source)

Disaster Management: the Indian way

Any policy is best judged by how well it is implemented on ground. The Government of India had incepted the Natural Disaster Management Program (NDMP) in 1992-93 following the devastating Latur earthquake to suggest a long-term strategy for managing natural disasters in the country. As a guideline the NDMP had also provided a long list of necessary institutional and legislative measures for the national, state and district levels to follow. In 1999, soon after the devastating cyclone in Orissa, another high powered committee on disaster management plans was constituted to prepare a comprehensive model for management of disasters. But the 2001 Gujarat earthquake has brought out in open several inadequacies in the country’s disaster management system. The 2004 tsunami catastrophe has proved again that the system in fact does not exist beyond the government files. As a consequence of the tsunami, on 11 January 2005, another high power committee was constituted by the central government to draft the Disaster Management Bill to start a multi dimensional endeavour involving various scientific, engineering and social processes. The draft bill became the National Disaster Management Act after being passed by Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and signed by the President of India on 23 December 2005. The Cabinet Committee on Management of Natural calamities and The National Disaster Response force was constituted on the same year. The 2008 Kosi floods in Bihar once more exposed the serious weaknesses in the government machinery and confirmed that disaster management system in India has turned into a disaster by itself. Neither the central nor the state governments have any clue on how the system is supposed to work.

Disaster Management Programs require multi-disciplinary and pro-active approach involving a number of departments and agencies spanning across all sectors. After every disaster strikes, limitations of the government machinery, its top-down approach and lack of determination to mitigate the impact of natural calamities comes into open. Our governments have learned little from experiences of the past disasters. Neither have they realized that costs of disaster mitigation are far more economical than spending crores on relief and rehabilitation.

Conclusion

It is beyond any doubt that in a natural disaster of extreme magnitude, where properties and lives of countless people are devastated, anger against the government administration is nothing unusual. If the Aila affected people in Bengal are demonstrating their anger against the authorities, they have enough reasons to do so. But it is also true that in a country like India, timely and evenly supplying relief material to each and every effected area or person is virtually impossible. Even a utopian administration cannot succeed in this task. There will be certain places where supply of relief will fall short to satisfy the real need. Therefore it is quite easy to find out stories of anger, frustration and deprivation in a situation like this. We are not saying this to cover up some of the genuine administrative lapses of the Bengal government’s but trying to view the situation from a realistic point of view. The point is – what are then the alternatives? Running a parallel administration while ignoring a democratically elected government? Purposefully defaming a sincere and concerned chief minister by questioning his motives and blowing the opposition leader out of proportion? Bringing out cliché allegations based on minor matter or element of the facts, focusing on side issues and fabricating them to an absurd level? Claiming every effort of the Bengal government as irrelevant and demanding for the impossible? Insisting on immediate disaster management solutions in a country where political cynicism, bureaucratic lassitude and corruption formidably rule the roost?

None of the above alternatives have any ability to bring smile on the face of the Cyclone Aila victims. It can only reinforce the farce of Indian democracy once more. Judicious preventive measures with community initiatives are the real answer to the problem, not the post-disaster relief and rehabilitation.

Image Courtesy:
daylife.com, westbengalnews.blogspot.com

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The End of CPI(M)?

The distressful performance of the CPI(M) in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls has uniformly delighted the Indian corporate bosses, big media, political analysts and a large section of the ‘conditioned’ civil society. Except in the north-eastern state of Tripura, where the party was able to maintain its dominance by winning both the Lok Sabha seats, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s overall performance in the country was terrible. The party suffered a serious setback in the ‘red bastions’ of Bengal and Kerala. To some extent, the Kerala results were expected where internal strife between Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan and the state party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan has greatly affected the party’s electoral prospect. The Kerala electorates also have a tendency to switch their political preference from one election to the next. But the Bengal electorates have delivered the most startling verdict. As a result, an ecstatic mood is visible among sections of the ‘awake and aware’ Left intellectuals who have gone into raptures over the outcome and came out in open with their daggers of intellectual reproach to pounce upon the ‘utterly vindictive’ and ‘arrogant’ leadership of the CPI(M). The General Secretary of the party Mr. Prakash Karat is their primary target. Calling him the ‘Commissar’ who ‘understands nothing of India and even less of politics’, the mocking tone of their criticism is clearly determined by a longstanding contention against Mr. Karat and the party. (Source) Many of these intellectuals who furtively eulogize the Maoists and their tactical line on elections are leaving no stone unturned to bash the Marxists for their electoral debacle. To them it was ‘a resounding slap on the face of the CPM’. Moreover, the ‘joyous news’ has encouraged the celebrated anti-communists and turned them completely berserk to announce that the Left is now history! (Source) Almost immediately after the election results were out, the Anandabazar Patrika group has planted a fictitious story to establish a deep feud between the Bengal CPI(M) and the party’s Central leadership, also aiming at the party’s General Secretary. To take advantage of the situation, the media group also spread a speculative newsroom scoop about Buddhadev Bhattacharyya’s willingness to resign as Chief Minister! This entire disposition is quite comprehensible due to the fact that the Marxists had fostered end number of enemies as a result of the particular brand of politics they have practiced during the last five years.

To find out why the CPI(M) has suffered so badly, in this discussion we will attempt to probe the imperative aspects of the episode, remaining confined only to Bengal. It is just not an election debacle for the CPI(M) but a much deeper and serious crisis for the Left movement in India. The crisis is enormous, complex and multidimensional which is virtually impossible to tackle within the limited space of a blog post.

Neither the CPI(M) nor the opposition Trinamool Congress (TMC) or the Indian National Congress (INC) had ever predicted such a fantastic outcome during the poll process. However, it was almost certain that the TMC-INC combine, forged just before the elections to prevent the anti-Left vote to split, was going to perform well. This was predicted after the experience of last year’s Panchayat polls where the Left Front and the CPI(M) has lost several of their grass root strongholds. According to the inner party predictions and pre-poll surveys conducted by various media groups, the combine was expected to win near to eighteen seats. But no one could foresee the final tally where the CPI(M) was left with only 9 seats and was wiped out in ten districts out of nineteen in the state. There is no doubt that it will take quite some time for the awestruck CPI(M) state and central leadership to restore the conditions in their favor after such a magnitude of thrashing. The overall repercussions that will automatically follow will also be rather difficult to deal with in the coming days. For the honest and sincere party workers and sympathizers, it is tough to keep faith on the maxim – tomorrow is another day.

What went wrong? Why did the loyal supporters and sympathisers of 32 long years increasingly distanced them from the CPI(M)? Did the party leadership put too much weight on the 2006 assembly poll slogan ‘agriculture is our base, industrialization our future’ and closed their eyes about the discontents that was emerging from the Buddhadev Bhattacharyya government's land acquisition policy? Did the party ignore the core areas of its strength – the poor and underprivileged rural populace and failed to convince them about the seemingly pro-capital stance of the Left Front government? Is it because of the arrogant attitude of the grassroot party functionaries who have turned into present day landlords in the eyes of the people? Is it because of the corruption and nepotism practiced by a good section of the party leaders which has led to their detachment from the people? Has the CPI(M), which is generally perceived as a cohesive, dedicated, closely controlled and regimented party has actually been metamorphosed into an inefficient, dishonest and sick organization? Is it because even after identifying the rot within its different layers, the leadership was unable to take proper action from the fear of losing the image, mass character and dominance of the party? Any of these or a combination of these rudimentary causes could be the reason why this time the people have decided not to trust the party which was reelected just three years ago in 2006 by a mammoth people’s mandate. The fall of communist character within the CPI(M) is highlighted by many pundits as the core reason behind the election debacle. There are plenty of ready facts to support this argument but did these detrimental features suddenly develop within the party over the last three years? If not, then how does it explain the party’s triumphant victory in the 2006 assembly polls?

According to the initial findings, there are three major interlinked reasons behind the disaster in Bengal. The first of the reasons is the startling pro-Congress wave in the country for a stable government at the center that has entirely rejected the Left Front and the CPI(M)’s call for a third alternative. Riding on the wave, the TMC has gained considerably in south Bengal to rout the Marxists. At the all India level, the vote share of the INC has increased by 2 per cent while CPI(M)’s vote share in Bengal has decreased by 6 per cent. This statistics is a clear indication that the pro-Congress wave was not the central reason behind the poor show of the party. Secondly, as the biggest constituent of the Left Front government, the CPI(M) has failed to appropriately explain to the agricultural poor, small farmers and labourers why the government got involved in acquiring fertile land for industry. Instead of gaining their confidence, the party was caught up in direct confrontation with them. The party leaders cannot coherently explain why the industrialization drive in Bengal was different from the capitalist model of market economy. The twin episodes of Singur and Nandigram were the epicenter of the land-industry controversy. Particularly, the fateful events of Nandigram had ripped open a can of worms, of various shapes, sizes and colors, which had ultimately turned lethal against the party. The party tried hard to control the all-out attack but failed to counter it. The TMC successfully manipulated this failure to build-up grave discontent within the masses with the active assistance of various comprador agencies and their peers including some prominent intellectuals. The cunning tactics adopted by the ‘magnetic’ Trinamool chieftain to extend her sweet lap towards all anti-CPI(M) forces including the Maoists for an all-out attack was one of the key reasons behind the reinforcement of public opinion against the CPI(M). Sensing that the state government is on back foot, the Trinamool chieftain almost ran a parallel government in the state, dictating terms and conditions to every government policies and programs. During the election campaign, the party had tried to relate the opposition’s violent anti-CPI(M) agitation with the semi-fascist terror atmosphere perpetrated by the Bengal Congress against them in the seventies. But 32 years is too long a time for people to even forget the face of their real enemies. The land acquisition controversy has gravely affected the party and was directly responsible for the erosion of a traditionally loyal and sizable Muslim support base of the Left, particularly in the rural centers of Bengal. The abrupt upshot of the Rizwanur Rehman case (Source) and TMC’s bitter and aggressive campaigning following the half-truth findings of the Sachar Committee Report concerning the backwardness of the Muslims in Bengal was the other contributory factors behind the loyalty shift of the Muslims to the opposition. The third potential reason was the accumulated ‘sins’ from three decades of uninterrupted power and the disdainful behavior and fraudulent activities of a section of arrogant and overconfident party leaders who had completely lost touch with the people to feel there pulse. All the three reasons clubbed together will make clear why large number of people has lost their trust on the party and its leaders – at least for now.

Few months before the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the Left parties withdrew their support from the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government over the issue of the Indo-US Nuclear deal. The CPI(M) under Mr. Karat undertook a pivotal role to strongly opposed the deal from an ideological standpoint. There were reasonable arguments to oppose the various tricky aspects of the nuclear deal which the party leaders had credibly raised at that time. But all these remarkable efforts looked like a grave tactical blunder when the party leadership failed poorly to convey the logic behind their opposition, the subservient attitude of the Prime Minister and the American lobby within the UPA, the Congress government’s disgraceful surrender before US imperialism and the evil designs behind the deal to the general public. The whole nuclear deal debate was reduced into an intellectual squabble between pro-deal and anti-deal argumentative groups and could not accurately expose the hidden threat – the threat of a close strategic and military tie up with the US that will drastically overturn India’s independent foreign policy.

CPI(M) leaders might have anticipated that opposing the deal from an anti-imperialist ideological standpoint will largely elevate the party’s image. But nothing of that sort happened. Instead, when the INC confederates smoothly roped in the Samajwadi Party in support of the government, the Left and the CPI(M) at one shot lost its significance in national politics. They were unsuccessful to convincingly establish the point that supporting the Congress led UPA government was a strategic compromise committed by them, keeping in mind the horrendous deeds of the former BJP led NDA government and its fascist associates. The support was not given as a blank-cheque to the Congress to rule the country according to their wish. It was based on a Common Minimum Program (CMP) from which the UPA was gradually but deliberately shifting away. Halfheartedly conducted propaganda by the party mass organizations was too feeble to counter the overwhelming publicity from the neo-liberal bourgeois media in support of the deal and the party lost its credibility in this extensive media war. The CPI(M) and its leaders turned into a villain in the minds of the people for destabilizing the government and ‘betraying the nation’. Moreover, the Left in general and the CPI(M) in particular had surprisingly ignored the opportunity to convert the nuclear deal debate into a major election issue. The party did not even try to explore the inherent possibilities of the topic for which it has taken such an extreme step and risked its political future. This gave chance to people like the expelled leader Mr. Somnath Chatterjee to describe the party’s central leadership as ‘narcissistic’. They had similarly failed to reap benefits from the impressive role they had played to stall the anti-people policies of the UPA government. The Congress on the contrary, had successfully twisted the Left’s positive contribution to the UPA government into their favor.

The CPI(M) has also paid a heavy price for its unrealistic overdrive to forge alliance with dubious political parties in a deviant urge to build up a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative third force. To occupy the non-Congress, non-BJP space, the party leadership had browsed for ‘progressive’ bourgeois allies and embraced almost every political party who was free floating in the uncertain pre-election political milieu. The hobnobbing of party leaders with political groups of unconvincing background, most of them former allies of the ultra-rightist BJP, has not gone down well with the masses. The leadership was unable to even convince a large section of their dedicated party workers to carry the idea of the third alternative among the electorates. The election outcomes have again proved that an opportunistic alliance based on simple electoral gains and devoid of specific programme oriented political struggles is neither creditable nor viable. CPI(M) Politburo member Sitaram Yechury has rightly described it as a ‘cut-paste job’ done on the eve of the elections. But how did leaders of the stature of Mr. Karat or Mr. Yechury and the entire CPI(M) central committee got carried away by such an enthusiastic gamble? This question still remained unanswered. What was the rationale behind allying with political buccaneers like Deve Gowda and Mayawati, who within three days after the results were declared, jumped in the UPA bandwagon to offer their unconditional support? The party leaders cannot evade this pertinent question by simply stating the terrible step of tactlessness as a mistake.

Today, many of the Left Front partners are putting the entire blame for their poor show on the ‘big brother’ CPI(M) and trying to wash themselves clean in front of the public. Central leaders are blamed for ‘blindly toeing the line of Prakash Karat’ and ‘following the agenda set by CPI(M)’. During the Nandigram incident, several Left Front partners and their upstart leaders had embraced the short-cut way to fame by openly and consistently criticizing the CPI(M) leadership in harsh and offensive language and tried hard to prove how pure Leftist they are. But unknowingly or intentionally they became a pawn in the cunning game of the anti-left forces and their valued representative – the Trinamool chieftain. The Left Front as a whole lost its trustworthiness and appeared to be deeply stained during that time. Though just before the Lok Sabha elections, the dissent Left Front leaders tried to showoff their unity with the CPI(M). But how much this showoff has been conveyed and accepted in the grass root level after all the previous acts of dissent is doubtful. Even if we consider that the unity was nearly total, the wise electorates, frustrated by the attitude of the left leaders were definitely not convinced. And they were absolutely right to do so. After the election results were out, the anti-CPI(M) rhetoric erupted again from several Left Front partners. This proves that a lot of things are not hale and hearty in the Left Front. A void has developed after the demise of the pragmatic old guards and the bigheaded new generations leaders seem to be more engaged to destroy than build.

Accepting the verdict, the CPI(M) politburo in a recent statement has stated that “Both national and state specific factors are responsible for the poor performance”. The politburo has also affirmed that the party will now “seriously examine the reasons for these reverses…conduct a self-critical review to form the basis for corrective steps” and will make “all out efforts to regain the support and confidence of the people”. To what extend this ‘self-critical review’ is conducted and ‘corrective steps’ is taken will determine how the party confronts the populist politics of Mamata Banerjee and her coterie of despotic, deceitful, vicious and repulsive leaders to ‘regain the support and confidence of the people’. Instead of acting as the crisis managers of the bourgeois parties, the party leaders should concentrate on streamlining the mass fronts. For quite some time, the mass fronts have grown droopy about prolonged mass struggles and has almost drifted away from the ideology of a Marxist-Leninist party. If the CPI(M) honestly introspects, corrects their mistaken policies and tactics and effectively turn the election debacle into a watershed, it will be the ideal homage to the countless party workers who had selflessly dedicated their entire life for the party and the Left movement in the country. The task is easier said than done.

In spite of their failure to act in response to the needs of the poor, in spite of the neo-liberal, anti-people policies of economic reforms it has pursued during the last five years of their governance, the centrist Congress Party has nevertheless received a comfortable mandate to rule the country for the next five years. Due to the enormous error of political judgment committed by them, the CPI(M) and the Left could not gain a bit from the prevailing discontent among the masses. This is the biggest irony of the 2009 general elections.

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The politics of ‘Ruddhasangeet’

Bratyajoner Ruddhasangeet (Stifled Song of an Outcast) is the autobiography of Debabrata (George) Biswas, a legend in the world of Rabindranath Tagore’s music, commonly known as Rabindra Sangeet. The musical career of Biswas started way back in the early forties and during the sixties he had already grown into a phenomenon to the ardent listeners of this genre. He was gifted with a deep, non-crooning and passionate voice that resembled the voice of black American singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. Biswas had a unique style of singing. Gleamed with enunciated pronunciation and sensitive modulation his performances could bring in life and vivacity into Tagore's songs. However, from 1964 onwards, the ostensive purists of the Vishwabharati Sangeet Board had started raising objections about his presentation style on the ground that Biswas was altering the conventional tune-notations with melodic excesses and wrong tempo. He was also accused for overusing western instruments in the prelude and interlude section of the songs. As the copyright owners, the Vishwabharati Sangeet Board was authoritatively controlling all Rabindra Sangeet recordings at that time. It was compulsory for every artist to get their nod before commercially producing any Rabindra Sangeet record. Deeply hurt by the dictates, Biswas initially had braced himself to fight with the Board but later decided on his own to stop recording any more songs since he was reluctance to bow down before the so-called exponents and experts of this puritan establishment. The detailed story of this famous conflict was unfolded by him in his autobiography, which was published in 1979. The following year on August 18, Debabrata Biswas was dead.

Besides his legendary persona as a Rabindra Sangeet artiste, Debabrata Biswas was once a card carrying communist. From its founding days Biswas was an active member of Indian People’s Theater Association (IPTA), the cultural front of undivided Communist Party of India. He had joined the organization under the instruction of Muzaffar Ahmed, one of the pioneers of the communist movement in India. Born from the ‘Anti-Fascist Writers Association’, IPTA (known as Gananatya Sangha in Bengal) was launched in 1943 during the stormy days of the Quit India movement. It was also the peak stage of the Second World War when fascist forces were nearing to the Soviet Union. The draft resolution of the IPTA conference in 1943 had stated that, “The immediate problems facing the people are external aggression by the Fascist hordes who are the deadliest enemies of freedom and culture; internal repression by an alien Government which seeks to hold our people in subjection and prevent them from organizing an effective defense of their homeland…” The primary objective of the IPTA was to bring all progressive, left-leaning and politically conscious writers and artists together on an anti-imperialist, anti-fascist platform that can function as a social and cultural bridge between the party and the masses and gradually emerge as a socio-political weapon without ignoring the artistic aspires.

Shaken up by the grim realities of the devastating Great Bengal famine of 1943 which had caused nearly three million starvation deaths, many creative artists and intellectuals became associated with IPTA to awaken, inspire and agitate the masses for a revolutionary change. Several cultural squads were formed from various provinces and regions of the country. With great enthusiasm the artistes tried to reach out to the people through their literature, plays, song and ballets. Numerous Gananatya songs, ballets like Shahider Dak (Call of the Martyr) and Bijon Bhattacharya’s play Nabanna (New Crop) had created a big sensation among the people. The IPTA impact as a mass cultural movement on the Indian cultural scene was tremendous. To create a people’s art, the IPTA artists experimented with various art forms, related them with social contents and carried them to the rural interiors of the country. Through a socially committed approach they have significantly transformed the customary norms and practices of various art forms and were instrumental to give rise to a new form of culture. Along with Debabrata Biswas, many later day cultural icons of Bengal like Jotirindra Moitra, Binoy Roy, Chittaprasad, Bijon Bhattacharya, Hemanga Biswas, Suchitra Mitra, Ritwik Ghatak, Shombhu Mitra, Tripti Mitra, Utpal Dutt and Salil Chowdhury were the direct products of IPTA. Later in his life, Biswas fondly called his IPTA days as Anandaniketan (abode of happiness).

Undeniably, a major inspiration to the 1940s IPTA movement was the Communist Party General Secretary Puran Chand Joshi. Though he was a man of politics, P C Joshi’s deep affection and understanding concerning art and artists had helped him to gather a brilliant team of creative personalities under the IPTA banner and delicately nurture the organization with the right kind of leadership. A man of remarkable human qualities, he was credited for encouraging “individuality among intellectuals and their growth and development along their own personality and taste, their own trajectory, even while urging them to put their talents at the service of the Indian people.” (Source) But the P C Joshi era of the Communist Party was short-lived. In the 1948 Party Congress, Joshi was removed from his post and gradually sidelined after being severely criticized for advocating unity with Indian National Congress (INC). After Joshi’s exit from the party leadership, the Communist Party’s widespread influence among intellectuals went into a steady decline. Under the new General Secretary B T Ranadive, the Party began moving towards an ultra-left line. Consequently, the IPTA was split into two camps – one supported the ultra-left Ranadive line, and the other strongly tried to oppose it. Instead of providing an effective cultural leadership, the party under Ranadive started dominating and dictating the artists. Personal and political conflicts brewed to overlap on each other. A large number of creative personalities started feeling stifled. Confused and frustrated by the internal developments along with the growing divisions in the international communist movement, many of them started leaving IPTA. In 1950, the party removed Ranadive for committing extreme and sectarian mistakes, for implementing unjust disciplinary actions against several party leaders and for taking up a ‘left adventurist’ line of struggles that has resulted in loss of life of several party members. (Source) But by the time, the effect of the Ranadive line has already taken its toll on the IPTA movement. A disheartened Debabrata Biswas parted from the IPTA and surrendered his party membership in the mid-fifties realizing that his Anandaniketan has turned into Dandaniketan (abode of torment).

Unlike several of his fellow travelers, Biswas had always maintained a dignified restrain about criticizing his party leadership and on many occasions lamented over the painful decease of the movement. Instead, he was bitingly critical about the role of his fellow IPTA artists and also strikingly self-critical. In his later years, he had expressed that the failure of IPTA was the result of a mistaken perception of the cultural movement. In a letter to Hemanga Biswas, he had written the following words which will spell out his viewpoint on the movement:

“I became involved with the Gananatya movement from the conviction that awakening mass consciousness can bring revolution in the country. But by carrying my made in Calcutta and Bombay subject matter to the nook and corners of the villages and towns, by performing songs or showing Shahider Dak for years, I have failed to penetrate even half an inch among the people. I came to realize that I needed to learn the language, customs, tradition and practices of different districts and its rural communities – to do so it is essential to live among the village folks and get educated by them. Being employed at Kolkata, I could not avail the opportunity. The condition of the people remained unchanged. I had befallen to a wrong path. I do accept my mistake. You did no justice to me by saying that I get mad hearing the name of Gananatya.”

This is the backdrop of Ruddhasangeet, a much hyped theatre production recently being staged in Kolkata by a newly formed theater group Bratyajon. The group is steered by the upstart actor-director Bratya Basu who has also scripted and directed the play. By narrating the life and times of Debabrata Biswas, Bratya Basu has got on an ideal subject that has sufficient components to demonstrate how “the creative spirit has always been dominated by institutions with those in power never allowing individuals to flourish”. Answering to the question why he has chosen this particular subject, Bratya Basu has replied, “I see him (Debabrata Biswas) as someone who had the courage to take on the establishment for his artistic freedom, for what he believed in. And I think as an artiste, I too am going through a similar struggle”. (Source) Ruddhasangeet is therefore Bratya Basu’s statement about how artists should “continue fighting against the forces that try to bind or stifle them”. Make no mistake, the stinging indictment of the establishment depicted in the play is squarely referring to no other but the ‘blatantly anti-people’ CPI(M) establishment. The subject has provided him a wide-ranging scope to exploit the indistinct areas from the life saga of Debabrata Biswas and fill them with his own anti-CPI(M) populist agenda.

Compared to the much larger space Biswas had devoted in his autobiography to describe every minute details of his conflict with Visva-Bharati, the book hardly covers anything about how ‘artistic talents have been suppressed or regimented’ during the Ranadive era of IPTA. But so what? The over excited Indian Express in a recent feature article has jumped into the bandwagon of half-truths and whole lies to establish that Biswas as a ‘Communist dissenter’ who became ‘disillusioned with the Communists’ and ‘expressed his anguish with the party in his autobiography’. (Source) Was Biswas actually disillusioned with the Communists or with the middle class pettiness of his fellow artists of IPTA? This is a debatable and knotty question that Ruddhasangeet has carefully avoided to portray.

The reason behind the ‘courageous’ excitement of the Indian Express is clear. The newspaper has obviously cherished the ultimate intention of Ruddhasangeet – its “stinging indictment of the CPM establishment in the state” that has “created ripples across the political and cultural spectrum”. It also took great pleasure to find that the play has tried to capture the “ruthless domination of cultural personalities in West Bengal under a repressive Communist regime”. The article has vividly described the Ritwik Ghatak episode of the play, where Ghatak while confronting a Communist Party commission chaired by Jyoti Basu, Pramod Dasgupta and Nirmal Ghosh shouts at Dasgupta: “Comrade Promode Dasgupta, I am Ritwik Ghatak...I am telling you, you are feudal. You consider party members as your own bonded labourers.” In real life, Ghatak was renowned for his little or no value emotional outbursts. He had once called the Anandabazar Patrika (ABP) media group a fascist organization and almost immediately corrected himself by saying that the group is actually a CIA agent! In fact, the Ritwik Ghatak episode proves nothing new except for the applaud it receives from an enthralled audience. To add more music, the article did not forget to quote Shaonli Mitra, renowned as the daughter of theatre legends Shambhu and Tripti Mitra. According to Shaonli, “There is a suffocating pressure from the ruling party in all spheres of life… We want change.” Here Shaonli is referring to the continuous campaign by a section of Kolkata artists and intellectuals who has recently put up a vague hoarding all over the city carrying pictures of their own vibrant heads with the statement ‘Vote for Change’.

The anti-CPI(M) tirade of the minuscule group of intellectuals which includes personalities like Bratya Basu and Shaonli Mitra has become a favorite media topic in Bengal. On daily basis, one or the other member of this ‘apolitical’ but utterly insolent to CPI(M) group is invited on TV talk shows to rant and rave against everyone and everything related to CPI(M). Tons of newsprints have been wasted in the hard attempt to popularize their ‘kick the CPM out – bring Mamata’ thesis. One of them has chosen to become a Trinamool candidate in the Lok Sabha elections; one is suspected for grabbing farmland in Bhangor of South 24 Paragana district, one has recently commented in public that by killing CPI(M) leaders and supporters the Maoists have done a good job. While some of them have complained that the veiled threat from the CPI(M) has badly affected their artistic career, in contrast, Bratya Basu’s Ruddhasangeet is “playing to packed galleries at the Academy of Fine Arts”. Isn’t all these instances not enough to prove how the CPI(M) led government has terribly regimented the ‘creative spirits’ in Bengal? Does it not prove how the artists and intellectuals have been barred from protest and dissent?

The CPI(M) baiter intellectuals have attempted to promote their glossy but fictitious agenda through the great support extended towards them by a section of the big media. Riding on the political inertia that has been craftily shaped after the Nandigram episode, these ‘pro-Left but anti-Left Front’ intellectuals are trying to reap maximum harvest from their one and only lofty theme – restoring the democratic environment and freedom of expression from a ‘demonic administration’. To reach their goal, they have chosen a strange bedfellow – Miss Mamata Banerjee. There could be a legitimate reason behind their strange bonding with the Trinamool chieftain. Creative brains always have a tendency to feel comfortable with intellectual stupidity.

Even if the upper layer of their ‘movement’ apparently looks woolly and fatuous, underneath there is a deep political conspire. We have to wait and watch how the plot unfolds in the coming days.

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Indian Democracy and its ‘revolutionary’ Maoists

“A peal of spring thunder has crashed over the land of India”. This is how the July 5, 1967 editorial of Communist Party of China (CPC) mouthpiece People’s Daily had described the peasant upsurge in a tiny Bengal village – Naxalbari. People’s Daily was endorsing the incidence where share croppers and landless laborers rose in revolt with ‘land to the tiller’ slogan against the local landlords. The editorial also went on to predict that “…a great storm of revolutionary armed struggle will eventually sweep across the length and breadth of India”. Named after its birthplace, the Naxalbari movement soon evolved into an armed uprising in Bengal and spread like wildfire in several Indian states, including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala. The movement reached its peak between May 1969 and June 1971 after the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was founded on April 22, 1969. But the stormy days didn’t last for long. From 1972, the movement started losing its impetus. Between 1973 and 1975, the central and the state governments, both under the Congress Party rule, jointly crushed the movement by ruthless army and police operations. Most of the prominent Naxal leaders were captured and jailed or dead in ‘police encounter’ including the principle ideologue Charu Majumdar, who had died in police custody in July 1972. After the first non-Congress Janata government came to power in 1977, the jailed Naxalites were released along with other political prisoners imprisoned under Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. By then, many of them were deeply frustrated over the failure of their movement and turned impassive about active radical politics. After 1977, the Naxalites were fragmented into numerous small groups under different leaders, organizations and ideological positions and were conflicting with each other over ideological-tactical debates with elements of personal egotism but could not generate any significant impact in the socio-political milieu of India. Evading from direct political linkage, many of the former Naxals started putting up non-governmental organizations to stay entrenched with social, economic, cultural, environmental, legal, human rights and gender related issues. The present day Indian Maoists trace their lineage back to this iconic ultra left-wing rebellion.

*****

The Naxalite movement inflamed again after the resurgence of two potent Naxalite groups in the 1980s. In Andhra Pradesh, the pro-Charu Majumdar People’s War Group (PWG) was set up in 1982 under the leadership of Kondapally Seetaramaiah. The other group was the Kanai Chatterjee, Amulya Sen and Chandrasekhar Das led anti-Charu Majumdar Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). After been restructured in the mid-1980s, MCC had extended its considerable influence in parts of central Bihar. Confined within their respective territory, the PWG and MCC had dominated the insurgency scene for some time and were also frequently engaged in violent fights against each other over territorial disputes resulting in the death of hundreds of cadres and sympathizers of both sides. But by 1992, counter-insurgency operations by the government in Andhra Pradesh have largely tamed the activities of the PWG. The outfit was banned and its erosion continued when large numbers of PWG cadres were either arrested or has surrendered before the security forces. In Bihar, violence related with caste prejudices and regular clashes with the upper castes private armies like the Ranvir Sena started showing signs of desperation among the MCC cadres. These alarming ground realities forced the two once-rival groups to come together on September 21, 2004 to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist) to act as “a consolidated political vanguard of the Indian Proletariat”. After ‘great debate and controversy’, the term ‘Maoism’ was adopted upholding Mao Zedong’s thought as the ‘third and higher stage in the qualitative development of Marxism’. Following the unification, the cadre strength and gun power of the alliance increased substantially and the group became the most considerable Naxalite formation in the country to secure its influence and control over a large geographical spread – the ‘Red Corridor’.

From Andhra Pradesh’s Telangana region to the Tarai region of Nepal, the ‘Red Corridor’ stretches about 92,000 sq. km linking parts of Karnataka, Tamilnadu and Maharashtra, the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, Western Orissa, Jharkhand, Central and North Bihar, the far-eastern region of Uttar Pradesh and the Bihar-Jharkhand border areas of Bengal. This vast stretch covers concentrated tribal pockets and comprises some of the poorest, underdeveloped and oppressed regions of the country. While the region is rich with mineral resources like coal and iron ore deposits, natural gases and forests, the Indian state has badly failed to deliver minimum social-economic amenities and to considerately attend the largely unseen suffering of the local people, particularly the tribals. This is the key reason why the Maoist movement has fairly succeeded to penetrate in this region. Displacement due to large scale projects, inability to avail the benefits from natural resources, failure of law and order and regular exploitation by local landowners, traders, police and corrupt government officials has added to set the ideal condition for the Maoists to exploit the people.

In remote and rural areas where socio-economic deprivation and exploitation are common, the Maoist approach to address long existing grievances through the barrel of the gun deeply influences the people to strike a sympathetic chord among them. It is therefore relatively easy to stir up the anger and resentment of the underprivileged, particularly the women and youth to join the guerrilla army and fight the ‘class repression, class exploitation and class rule’ of the Indian State. In their own way, the Maoists have also dealt with a core grievance of the rural poor – their lack of land rights. By forcefully acquiring land from the oppressive landlords at gunpoint and redistributing them to the landless peasants has significantly helped the growth of their support base among the poor rural peasantry.

*****

After the massive counter-insurgency operations in Andhra Pradesh, the Maoists had suffered considerable losses and have gradually shifted their focus to Dandakaranya (a 35,600 square miles spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, and Andhra Pradesh), Bihar and Jharkhand. However, in the Bastar and Dantewada districts of Chhattisgarh, the Maoists were harshly confronted by a unique form of resistance from the local tribals – the Salwa Judum. Steered by Mahendra Karma, a local tribal leader belonging to the Congress party, the movement came up in the year 2005 as “a spontaneous reaction by the tribals to defend themselves against the reign of terror unleashed by the Naxalites”. (National Human Rights Commission report to the Supreme Court of India) The Salwa Judum recruited its members from the villages, built-up local vigilante groups and was supported by the Chhattisgarh government as a counter insurgency force. Its members, mostly tribal youths were recruited as Special Police Officers (SPOs) by the Chhattisgarh state Police and trained in using arms.

The secretive and illegal activities of the Maoists have kept their political outlook and motives mostly distant from the larger Indian population living outside their sphere of influence. Though there are instances which illustrate that the Maoists are trying to spread their influence outside their customary stronghold, in reality, their influences are still concentrated in the poorest regions inhabited mostly by the tribal population. For obvious reasons, the invisible Maoist leaders have kept their focus confined on the relatively inaccessible rural belts. The reasons are not only tactical as stated in their party documents. It is also due to the fact that for conducting their acts of individual violence and terror these places are good as safe shelters from the counter-insurgence forces. Except among the habitual woolgathering intellectuals, so called human-right groups and sections of the middle-class student population in the cities, the Maoists have minimal influence among the urban petty bourgeoisie and the industrial working class. After the unceasing rise of Dalit politics and the ominous growth of Hindutva-communal forces, chances for the Maoists to make a greater impact on the general course of Indian political sphere has become marginal and the prospect of expanding into unexplored zones is steadily shrinking.

Killing a handful of ‘class enemies’, clashing with the mining and steel companies, attacking police posts and jails, damaging vital infrastructures like roads, bridges, and railroads, blasting landmines to ‘wipe out the armed forces of the counter-revolutionary Indian state’ or establishing parallel governments of Janathana Sarkar in the ‘liberated zones’ of remote tribal pockets to encircle cities while being isolated from the majority of the people are the fantastic Maoist tactics to establish the People’s Democratic State. In the extremely complicated composition of a multi-national, multi-religious, and caste-divided Indian society, the Maoist proposition to shape the revolution by ‘seizure of political power through protracted People’s War’ sounds thrilling and romantic but is far away from the prevailing reality of contemporary India.

Misinterpreting Mao’s annihilation theory and embracing the people’s war theory of Lin Biao which the Chinese Communist Party has discredited long ago, the Maoists turn into a real nuisance when they start forcing their erroneous doctrinarism on the masses to bear the brunt of their ‘revolutionary’ actions. Democratic struggle and mass-political programs have no place in their credo. Instead, they are obsessed with armed activities and military programs that include sabotage and annihilation of enemies through individual assassination. Maoist leaders also have a typical tendency to justify their actions of individual terror by parroting quotations of Mao like ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’ out of context. Most of the victims of their so called ‘revolutionary tactics’ of crushing the heart of the enemy’s state machinery is always the poor and the ordinary. Their annihilation theory has also been extended toward rival Naxalite groups and members or supporters of mainstream Left parties. To fund their revolutionary operations, the Maoists extract levy from the landlords, the village rich and government contractors, get involve in racketeering of forest resources, force farmers to cultivate poppy crops to harvest opium that fetches lucrative price and also helps the ‘class enemy’ bourgeois parties to win elections in exchange for a substantial amount of money.

A classic example of this strange ultra-left adventurism is evident from the role they played in the so called ‘liberated zone’ of Nandigram. Here, the outfit took the initiative on behalf of the Trinamool Congress to build-up an armed resistance against the ‘conspiracies and treacherous policies’ of the Left Front government of Bengal. As claimed by Koteswar Rao, CPI (Maoist) politburo member in charge of Bengal, Jharkhand and Orissa, the Maoists were armed by the Trinamool to spearhead the movement. (Source) According to the CPI (Maoist) General Secretary Ganapathy, Maoist cadres were in the forefront to “lead the movement in the correct direction” and stall the alleged ‘land grab’ of the state government which was acting at the behest of the ‘comprador’ Salim Group. Eleven months of their stupendous effort has immensely helped the Trinamool Congress to seize political grip in the area. Soon after their victory in the Panchayat polls, the Trinamool Congress has completely disregarded them and pushed them out from Nandigram. Thereafter, no news of any Maoist activity has been reported from there. Since the ‘revolution’ in Nandigram is over, the Maoists have thus shifted their focus on Lalgarh in West Midnapore leaving behind Nandigram in the safe hands of Trinamool!

On November 2, 2008 a landmine was detonated on the convoy route of Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee and Union Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan who were returning from Salboni after the foundation stone ceremony of Jindal steel plant. The landmine wire was found to be originating from Lalgarh. As a result, the Police entered the adjacent villages and picked up some local tribals as suspects. A protest movement sparked off in Lalgarh over allegations of police high handedness during the raids and almost immediately, the Pulishi Santrash Birodhi Janashadharaner Committee (People’s Committee against Police Atrocities) was floated. Led by a 45 year old local tribal leader Chhatradhar Mahato with obvious Maoist links, Lalgarh is brewing for a remarkably similar Nandigram style ‘movement’. To recreate another ‘liberated zone’, the local tribals are mobilized with arms; roads are dug and blocked at several places by felled trees to resist the ‘oppressive and autocratic’ state incursion. Maoist sympathizer organizations like the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) and Lalgarh Andolon Sanhati Mancha (Solidarity Forum for Lalgarh Movement) are fueling this ‘unique form of democratic politics’ from their backyard at Kolkata. While media report (The Times of India, 22 April 2009) has suggested that sophisticated and indigenous firearms have been sneaked inside Lalgarh, local tribals are seen brandishing traditional weapons in front of television cameras to put up the impression of a genuine tribal revolt.

Bengal is a difficult terrain for the Maoist to bloom. When the central and other state governments believe that the Maoist problem is largely a law and order issue, the Left Front government has carefully comprehended the socio-economic aspect of the problem and tried to tackle it through ideological and political means. In other states, the Maoists have capitalized from the existing grievance among the rural poor concerning land rights. But in Bengal, land reform and redistribution has been a remarkable success. This achievement has mostly isolated the Maoists from the larger section of the rural populace. In other states where 4 per cent of families owned 60 per cent of lands, in Bengal 40 per cent of the families own 80 per cent of the land. Not been able to win over the people, the vengeful Maoists have thus targeted the CPI (M) workers. The recent Maoist incursions are mostly visible in some regions of Purulia, Bankura and Midnapore districts where lack of development remains to be a relevant aspect even after the successful implementation of land reforms. Bengal still has poor, landless and marginalized people who exist without any access to agriculture and depends on the forests for their livelihood. The Maoists are been able to penetrate and influence this section through the gap created by inadequate development and lack of basic amenities.

*****

Six days before the polling for 2009 Lok Sabha elections began, the Maoists had attacked NALCO’s bauxite mines in Orissa and killed at least 8 Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) jawans and injuring scores of others. On 16 April, during the first phase of the month long election schedule, at least 17 people were killed by them in a string of attacks across the ‘Red Corridor’. To enforce their poll boycott strategy and disrupt the election procedures through violence, armed Maoist ‘people’s militia’ attacked on polling booths and vehicles carrying the election officials. Five members of a polling team were killed by a landmine blast in Rajnandgaon district of Chhattisgarh. A bus carrying Border Security Force (BSF) personnel for election duty was blown off by another landmine explosion in Jharkhand’s Latehar district; bullets were sprayed at the bus killing seven BSF personnel, the bus driver and his assistant. In Bihar’s Gaya district, the Maoists open fired at a polling station in Bankebazaar killing a policeman and a Home Guard on duty and looted the electronic voting machines (EVM) and four rifles. Though termed as a ‘spectacular’ success by sections of the media, actually, the Maoists were successful to attack just 71 of the 76,000 vulnerable polling booths. In the second and third phase of the elections, the intensity of Maoist attacks has dropped substantially.

When the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) was formed by the Naxalites in May 1968, one of the first resolutions passed by the body was not to participate in elections. While the CPI (Maoist) is still carrying this legacy, Naxalite factions like the CPI (M-L) Liberation has “corrected the mistake of completely rejecting parliamentary politics” in 1982. Kanu Sanyal, one of the founding leaders of the Naxalite movement has “accepted parliamentary practice as one form of revolutionary activity”. Even their counterpart in Nepal, the CPN (Maoist) which had once pledged to fight jointly with them have joined the mainstream political system and participated in elections.

Cocksure about their ‘creative’ application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the CPI (Maoist) refuses to recognize any necessity of participating in a bourgeois-democratic parliament. They are ideologically motivated in their belief that in a country where bourgeois democratic revolution has not yet been completed “the rule of the masses cannot be achieved through normal political methods” and so it is absolutely necessity to propagate “extensively and concretely to boycott the parliamentary elections”. Based on a personalized, narrow and distracted perception about the ‘objective conditions’ of India, the group believes that parliamentary institutions and systems are “discredited to a large extent in the eyes of the people” and there is no ‘objective basis’ for them to participate in this system just for “exposing the parliamentary system from within”. Participation in election “neither helps in developing revolutionary class struggle, nor in enhancing democratic consciousness among the people.” Instead, it only fosters ‘constitutional illusions’ and distract from “intensifying revolutionary class struggle and armed struggle against the state.” According to them, “promoting alternative institutions of people’s power” is the only way to “enhance people’s consciousness and to wipe out their illusions” about the present parliamentary system. Answering to the question on why the CPI (Maoist) declines to fight elections and refuses to participate in the democratic process, the Maoist leader Ganapathy’s has remarked, “You think raising issues in the parliament is the democratic way whereas we believe that people are raising their issues in a democratic way through organized protests”. (Source) Marxist-Leninist parties and groups who participate in elections are accused for diverting ‘revolutionary armed struggle into legal and peaceful channels’. Terming parliamentary politics as a ‘dog-eat-dog world’ and the Parliament as a ‘talking shop’, a recent Maoist released squarely blames all the mainstream Left parties like CPI (M), CPI and even the Naxalite CPI (M-L) Liberation, for playing the ‘most dubious role in legitimizing the farce of parliamentary process’. The Maoists are particularly antagonized with the CPI (M) and have termed the largest communist party of India as ‘social fascists’.

The political theory of the Maoists seems to be more inclined towards anarchism than Marxism. The Maoist viewpoint on shunning elections as a matter of strategy is surprisingly similar with the anarchist perspective. Anarchists believe that, “Utilizing the state, standing in elections, only prepares people for following leaders – it does not encourage the self-activity, self-organization, direct action and mass struggle required for a social revolution.” Likewise, the Indian Maoists also believe that “participation in parliament does not help in developing the subjective forces. Rather it will only drive them into legalism and divert them from … intensifying revolutionary class struggle”. Anarchists argue for the need of “creating alternative, libertarian, forms of social organization which can become a force to resist the state, win reforms and, ultimately, become the framework of a free society.” The Indian Maoists believe in “promoting alternative institutions of people’s power” as the only way to enhance people’s consciousness. Anarchists reject the Leninist idea that standing for elections immensely helps to carry the agitation of the proletarian party among the masses. The Indian Maoists reflect the same thought when it says that “participation in election will only sabotage the revolutionary movement”.

Will the Maoists also echo the anarchist wisdom that all Marxists are not Leninists? While mechanically theorizing their election boycott stand, the Maoists has carefully kept aside the indispensable polemics of Lenin. Long ago, in one of his most important writing ‘Left-wing’ Communism, an Infantile Disorder, Lenin has categorically pointed out that participating in a bourgeois-democratic parliament actually helps the revolutionary party to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments ‘deserve to be done away with’. Lenin had argued that far from causing harm, the parliamentary forum provides opportunities to expose the system of capitalism and facilitates the successful dissolution of the institution. Taking part in the election campaigning draws the masses into the election struggle to “take the bourgeoisie at its word and utilize the machinery it has set up”. To extend his argument Lenin had pointed out that “Communists should constantly, unremittingly and unswervingly utilize parliamentary elections …and all other fields, spheres and aspects of public life, and work in all of them in a new way, in a communist way”. Communists must learn to “create a new, uncustomary, non-opportunist and non-careerist parliamentarianism”. Lenin though did not forget to ring his warning about the pseudo-revolutionaries – those who are incapable of taking into account the rapid change of forms, become “hypnotized by a definite form” and are “afraid to see the break-up which objective conditions made inevitable”.

*****

Sudeep Chakravarti, the author of Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country has said in an interview that, “India’s Maoists don’t really need to win; they just need to be there, to show us where we have gone wrong”. (Source) Chakravarti’s admiration towards the Maoists for their role as conscience keepers of the Indian society is simplistic and soaked with romanticism. This flabby estimation might please the middle-class conscience of the Maoist sympathizers of India but will definitely not help the Maoist movement to advance any further from their present situate. Unless the Maoists learn to shed their flawed obsession with armed activities, remove the dogmatic faith from their minds that guerilla warfare is the only path to liberation, realize the necessity of democratic struggle and mass-political programs, arrive on a common platform with other Left parties and develop tactical alliances with them to settle on issues pertinent to the people, the movement will continue to remain isolated and confined within the remote corners of the country and subsequently become marginalized. If the Maoist leaders cannot give up their old adventurist line and comprehend the major contradictions of Indian society, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to make progress towards occupying the center-stage of Indian politics. By moving away from their commitment to violent insurrection and joining the democratic process, the CPN (Maoist) in Nepal has already shown a way to their Indian counterpart. Whether the Indian Maoist leaders can go for a major theoretical breakthrough and ‘take into account the rapid changes of forms’ and respond to the ‘break-up which objective conditions made inevitable’, whether they can develop the subjective forces in a true Marxist way or remain blinded by misreading of the objective conditions will determine their future significance in the Indian political sphere.

Map courtesy: wikipedia.org

Internet References:
1. Maoist Document: Strategy & Tactics of the Indian Revolution
2. CLSA Special Report: India’s Naxalities
3. Anil Biswas ‘Maoism’: An Exercise in Anarchism
4. Tilak D. Gupta: Recent Developments in the Naxalite Movement
5. Venkitesh Ramakrishnan: The road from Naxalbari
6. Ajai Sahni: The riot of Red flags

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Towards a secular pro-people alternative?

The emergence of a third alternative has raised some serious doubts in the mind of the Indian electorate. Theoretically, the concept of a third alternative is exciting as it has the potential to be more consensus-based and apparently is capable of reflecting the alternative opinion of the electorate in a healthier way. But in practice the idea is underlined by skeptical connotations. The main cause behind this doubt is derived from the historical experiences of similar non-Congress, non-BJP formations of the past. Whenever there was a post-election positive atmosphere generated by political conditions for an alternative force, most of the efforts had failed to deliver in accordance to the public expectations due to the diverse political objectives of the consequent political parties. For many of the constituents, the formation of a ‘Third Front’ was envisaged purely in mere electoral terms, keeping in mind their restricted political equations. These political parties, many of them with strong regional perspectives usually come together in a situation of electoral compulsions but soon enough, due to their conflicting ambitions, prefer to roll back into their respective regional agenda. The lack of common vision and objectives between the constituents quickly move towards internal differences, political and personal rivalry between the leaders sprung up in the most deplorable manner which ultimately compels the formation towards its untimely collapse. Instead of sustaining its significance as a robust force, the ‘Third Front’ formations of the past, on the contrary, have strengthened the Congress and the BJP and both the parties has immensely benefited by the ‘failed experiments’ of the formations. But in spite of this fact, one cannot deny that the experiments had its crucial significances also. Whether we like it or not, it has definitely strengthened the Indian democracy by facilitating the progress of smaller parties to grow important in national politics.

Stability of a future government is one of the prime criteria to the electorates while they cast their votes. There is a deep reservation in the mind of the Indian electorates about the third force concept as all similar non-Congress, non-BJP governments in the past have failed to complete their full term. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that the Indian electorate is not too much enthusiastic about the third alternative formation. They are asking – is the alternative capable to provide stability? Will it be possible for them to keep aside their conflicting ambitions to enforce pro-people policies and effectively keep the communal forces at bay? At a time of unprecedented global economic crisis, will it be possible for them to co-opt an effective economic policy which will protect the jobs and livelihood of millions of common people and at the same time encourage the economy to prosper? All these are pertinent questions which need to be convincingly addressed.

The Left is presently playing a key role in giving shape to another pragmatic concept of a third alternative in the 2009 General Elections. They have specified that their aim is to put up a non-Congress, non-BJP choice in front of the electorates and to provide an alternative platform for the people, who do not want to support either the Congress or the BJP. They have laid emphasis on the need for alternate pro-people social and economic reforms and an independent, non-aligned foreign policy which will be qualitatively different from the policies which the two largest national parties have a tendency to follow. According to the CPI(M) general secretary Mr. Prakash Karat, “…democratic and secular forces who can agree with the Left on pro-people economic policies, on social justice measures, and an independent foreign policy” will join hand for this proposed formation. The Left has primarily achieved some vital success during the build-up process of the third alternative. Some regional parties spread across various states of the country, smaller but important in electoral terms, have already agreed to be part of this formation. The prospect that more parties associated with both the BJP led NDA (National Democratic Alliance) and the Congress led UPA (United Progressive Alliance) are likely to join the new formation has also brightened. The Congress and BJP both has initially tried to ignore this formation but in the manner both are mocking the formation and aggressively attacking it with their selective rhetoric in various election rallies is a clear indication that they are growing more and more tensed. The prime reason behind their anxiousness is due to the lack of any major election issue this time. The possibility to win the mind of the Indian voters has therefore become dim and both the Congress and the BJP is finding great difficulty to build-up public support around themselves.

In this scenario, the regional political forces will gain momentum and will certainly play a prominent role in the national level of politics. The possibility that the Congress and the BJP might lose significant ground in the hands of their principal regional opponents in respective states is growing stronger. Also when too many parties are knocking against each other for a limited space, the situation becomes more complicated for the large national parties to deal with. The important fact that both of them have a very limited presence in some of the key big states of the country which contribute close to 50 per cent of the total seats in the Indian Parliament is hard to ignore. This is also the reason why many of the present NDA-UPA allies are keeping their intentions obscure and maintaining a fluid state to reconsider all sorts of possibilities that are likely to emerge after the polls. Even crucial regional parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) while showing interest about a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative have declined to be part of any pre-poll alliance.

The concept of a third alternative is significantly different from the concept of a ‘Third Front’. It should be noted that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) which is playing a pivotal role in giving shape to this ‘viable, credible and sustainable electoral alternative’ has never called this formation a ‘Third Front’ but mentioned it as a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative. The term Third Front is actually a misinterpretation of the media. While clarifying the concept, the party has said that it does not conceptualize this third alternative purely in electoral terms but as a force ‘forged on the basis of people’s sustained struggles and movements’. Instead of confining itself to political manoeuvring and electoral bargaining, the desired objective of the party is to contribute to a progressive shift in Indian politics through joint popular struggles on a pro-people agenda built around the two basic issues – opposition to communalism and anti-people economic policies of the Congress and the BJP. The CPI(M) also perceives that opposing anti-people economic policies also means taking a principled anti-imperialist position that will uphold the sovereignty of India in foreign policy issues. Regional secular parties, those who reflect the discontent of common people against the anti-people economic policies will be forced to join this third alternative because they will eventually feel the pressure from their own social base as the living conditions of the masses is deteriorating further and further.

There is really no significant differences in the liberalization and privatization policies of the Congress and the BJP. The successive NDA and UPA regimes both have subscribed to liberalism friendly policies and encouraged rampant privatization in significant social sectors like health and education. Low state spending and reduction of subsidies for agriculture sector has intensified the agrarian crisis and consequently led to more and more farmer suicides not only in Maharashtra but also in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. During the UPA rule, the Left ‘intrusion’ has safeguarded the banking sector from the impact of the global economic crisis, the insurance sector from foreign direct investment and helped to protect many other public sector industries from the disinvestment policy of the Government. Its continuous pressure on the Government has also forced it to approve the Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Forest Tribal Bill. The Congress led UPA has also struck a strategic alliance with the United State through the military collaboration agreement which is an unprecedented shift from India’s sovereign foreign policy. But the manner in which the Congress led UPA went after the dubious Indo-US nuclear deal which the Left has been opposing from the beginning has greatly disillusioned them about the Congress.

The Congress led UPA has failed to address the alarming price rise of essential commodities including the price of drugs and medicines. This has severely affected the lives of the population who belongs to the lower level of the socio-economic stratum. The economic policies of UPA were targeted towards favoring big businesses and as a result have widened the social divide in the country. The urban and rural rich have reaped the maximum benefits of the so called ‘development’ and at the same time the vast majority has sunk to a greater extent into poverty and hunger. It is bizarre that in a country where 230 million people are undernourished, 40 per cent of children less than three years of age are underweight, 77 per cent of the population spends less than Rs. 20 a day and 39 per cent of adult population is illiterate – four out of the ten richest people in the world are Indians! Who are actually benefiting from the four years of ‘consecutive economic growth’ in GDP till 2008 is evident from these facts.

In the absence of any major election issue, the BJP has returned to its nucleus – pulling out the Hindutva agenda from their closet. Obviously, a leopard cannot shed its spots. By raising the Ram temple and Ram Setu issue and boasting to replicate the Gujarat model, BJP is hoping to stir up a viable and effective election wave that might pave the way for L.K. Advani to occupy the Prime Minister’s seat. In the recent years, communal forces have continued with their vicious and divisive activities under the political umbrella of the BJP. The party continues to cover nefarious elements like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, those who has perpetrated violent attacks on Muslim and Christian minorities in Orissa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajashtan and Chhattisgarh. The recent Barun Gandhi episode is a ringing proof of this nakedly divisive politics of the BJP. It stands for the most reactionary forces of India and keeps on communalizing the terrorism issue by attributing all terrorist activities to the Muslim community of this country. The party’s hypocritical stand on the Malegaon blasts case where Hindutva extremists were arrested for perpetrating the heinous crime has brought out the diabolical disposition of the BJP in the open. The BJP is essentially a regressive force that seeks to pass off majority communalism as ‘nationalism’ and represents a ‘distilled communalism’ in all aspects of their agenda. Instead of involving the common masses to build up a powerful and unified alternative force against this communalism menace, the Congress has deliberately preferred to take a soft and safer stand in the BJP ruled states where they are the chief opposition party. In a state like Gujarat, it has even taken the path of soft Hindutva – just for electoral gains.

There are predictions that the Left will be unable to sustain its strength of 60 MPs in this election. The lack of any major national election issue possibly will also adversely affect the Left’s prospects in Bengal and Kerala. Though it is early to comment on how much the Left will loose their grounds, one thing is certain. Even if it looses ground, the loss will be replenished by the third alternative allies including the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) which will help them to remain important in national politics. This specific aspect has ringed alarm bells to the Congress and BJP. Both the parties are not only worried about their incapability to win enough seats to be in command of any future coalition, the sturdy presence of an ideology bound Left force is always viewed as a spoiler by them. In whichever form it might ultimately shape-up, the significance of the third alternative lies here.

Image courtesy: picasaweb.google.com

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Tweedledum and Tweedledee: tale of two manifestos

ABP group’s English daily The Telegraph has done a ‘psychological analysis’ between Mamata Banerjee and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya based on their recent appearance in two separate Bengali television channels. (Source) According to the newspaper, the ‘down to earth’ Mamata Banerjee was looking energetic, domineering and aggressive compared to the ‘teacher-like’ Buddhadeb Bhattacharya who looked tired. It also stated that “…there was no denying one thing – the Mamata show brought alive her old image as the girl next door.” This familiar bazaar style of analysis is nothing new before any election in Bengal. But this time, Mamata Banerjee has put ABP group think-tanks into a dilemma because according to them she has ‘inclined towards left’ to become ‘Comrade Mamata’. The ABP group is particularly upset with Mamata Banerjee because her bombastic political language in showing many similarities with the distinctive Leftist language that ABP group greatly dislikes. The group therefore has crafted an apparently ambiguous policy to keep a fine balance between criticizing Mamata Banerjee and simultaneously allocating full-time marathon publicity to her. Keeping in mind the immediate consequences of the general elections, ABP group is more worried about the rising role of the Left particularly the CPI(M) in central politics.

There should be no doubt about Mamata Banerjee’s tenacious anti-CPI(M) stance. This is her one and only eternal agenda that has elevated her as the chief opposition voice in Bengal. Her inceptive attempt to wrestle the mighty Marxists of Bengal as a Congress (INC) leader had failed to bloom due to the party’s chronic and acute factionalism. To protest the INC’s ‘secret deals with the Marxists’ she had even gone to the extent to stage a suicide drama by wrapping a shawl around her neck in full public view. For her fanatical rebellion against friends and foes alike she had earned the media nickname ‘rebel without a pause’. (Source)

Alleging the INC as CPI(M)’s B-team, in 1997 she finally split the party and formed Trinamool Congress (TMC). Without any delay, TMC allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and paved the way for the Hindu communalists to spread its root in Bengal. Though in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections TMC unexpectedly won 8 seats but the party could not sustain this euphoric success as well as their bonhomie with the BJP for long. Mamata Banerjee’s habitual autocratic style of functioning and her intention to directly deal with the BJP central leadership while ignoring the State leaders has largely irked the State BJP unit. Within a short period of time Mamata Banerjee also started getting feedbacks about the benefits her party was actually reaping from hobnobbing with the BJP compelled her to worry about her political future. As a consequence of this anxiety, TMC allied with the INC in 2001 assembly polls and after facing electoral thrashing from the Left Front, raised good tantrum against the State Congress leadership and returned back into the BJP fold. From this time onwards Mamata Banerjee’s political graph displayed a steady decline. In the 2004 Lok Sabha polls she was the only winning TMC candidate and in the 2006 assembly polls her party faced another devastating electoral defeat and lost more than half of its sitting legislators.

Mamata Banerjee’s fascistic mindset and her obstinate anti-CPI(M) agenda has made her the darling of the reactionary elements active in Bengal society from the early days of her political career. The chronicle of her ascending and descending political career is populated with many predictable and unpredictable bedfellows. She has embraced almost all the opportunist possibilities aimed to trounce the Marxists and attain supreme political power in Bengal but has miserably failed to succeed till date. Thanks to their inept handling of the twin issues of Singur & Nandigram, the Left Front government and the CPI(M) has tremendously helped her to stumble upon a wonderful option previously unexplored by her trial and error method of politics – the option to take cover under a red cloak, impersonating the bona fide Leftists.

Her fictitious Leftist stance became evident when she levitated the two conferred gifts of Singur & Nandigram. She announced that her fight is not against Left politics but particularly against the Communist Party of India (Marxist). To become more Leftist in the eyes of the Bengali populace, Mamata swiftly befriended the ultra-left groups including the Maoists and extended her lap towards expelled, renegade and ‘disillusioned’ political leaders and workers of the CPI(M) and other Left Front constituents. But her unexpected support came from a prominent section of the Bengali intelligentsia and cultural activists. Though most of the agitators were seemingly upset with the ‘pro-rightist, neo-liberal’ bend of the Marxist government and resentful about the ‘Stalinist arrogance’ of the CPI(M), there are sufficient and credible proofs to believe that a specific acrimonious group among the dissenting intelligentsia had other iniquitous motives in their heart. The two sides rapidly came closer with a ‘common cause’. From the early days of her anti-industrialization agitation, Mamata Banerjee drew maximum support from this section and successfully proliferated banal anti-CPI(M) hatred. During that period, a supportive media carefully triggered off anti-CPI(M) public opinion through disinformation and cosmetic allegations of atrocity which had helped to set the TMC euphoria against the absolute monolithic presence of CPI(M) in every nook and corner of the State. Tasting blood, heinous domestic and global quarters pounced into action and acted catalyst to this extraordinary alliance. These quarters felt enthralled to share the credit with Mamata Banerjee about TMC’s ‘considerable’ success in shaking the CPI(M) in Bengal.

To efficiently unnerve the ‘atrocious’ Left Front government, this particular intelligentsia group came out with a unique concept. With the help of ultra-left sympathizers, they brought the Maoists at Mamata Banerjee’s doorstep ‘to support her anti-CPI(M) crusade’. The Maoists became brother-in-arms of the TMC goon’s in Nandigram, Lalgarh and elsewhere in the State. In the last couple of months, the TMC-Maoist combine has killed at least 15 CPI(M) leaders and workers in different districts of Bengal and even targeted the convoy of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya in West Midnapur. Significantly, no other political party members of Bengal were targeted by the Maoists other than the CPI(M). Not a single one from the intellectual allies of Mamata Banerjee who habitually shed gallons of crocodile tears for the ‘poor people’ of Nandigram has ever condemned any attack on the ‘poor people’ of the CPI(M) and preferred to turn stone-deaf on this issue. Why count the dead who belongs to the CPI(M)? Reporting on the recent political killings in Bengal, The Indian Express though agreed that “CPI(M) workers (are) at the receiving end in most places”, but at the same time did not fail to declare that the killings reveal the “change in political alignment that is sweeping large parts of Bengal” and how “the Trinamool Congress is denting the rural base of the red brigade”. Change, in whatever form it might be is always welcome!

With meticulous and eclectic scheming, her new found friends renovated Mamata Banerjee as a ‘true Leftist’ icon. To generate a Leftist milieu around every TMC gathering, popular IPTA songs of communist mass movements of the past were replicated and performed regularly. Celebrity NGO friends Medha Patkar and Anuradha Talwar helped her to reach national and international ‘bleeding heart’ forums. Within days, the 'matured' Mamata Banerjee became a champion of the farmers cause, started chanting Leftist topics like disinvestment, privatization, foreign direct investment; globalization and big capital – all at one go. Now she certainly needs to light candles in memory of slain Palestinians in Gaza Strip and voice against Israeli aggression. Her friends are also working overtime to titivate her as the guardian of Bengali culture. Delighted by their terrific effort, Mamata Banerjee started bestowing gratuity – Kabir Suman was granted with a TMC ticket from Jadavpur Lok Sabha seat and Suvaprasanna received a huge amount of money from her MP fund to construct a Bangla Bhasa (Bengali Language) memorial in Kolkata.

According to media reports, Suvaprasanna has graciously refused Mamata Banerjee’s offer to contest the elections as he desires to be remembered by posterity ‘only as an artist’. Whether this infamous artist cum art guru will be remembered as an artist or not is debatable but he will definitely be remembered for playing the classy role of Rasputin in Mamata Banerjee’s theatre. Suvaprasanna is valued for his incredible and convincing track record of easily reaching out to ‘significant’ quarters of importance. Another prominent member from this intellectual assembly buzzing around Mamata Banerjee today is the ‘young and innocent’ playwright and actor Bratya Basu. His role is conceivable from an article he wrote for the Trinamool mouthpiece Jago Bangla. In this Bengali article ‘Telling you Comrades’, Bratya Basu wrote, “The renowned painter Suvaprasanna often tells me, ‘Without a change nothing is going to happen to this State’. I believe in these words…everyone knows about the wily ones, those who are earning their good fortune from the direct assistance of the government and CPM party….leaving aside these small number of brokers who are buzzing like flies around the honeycomb of power, there is a great number of people who are honest…I appeal to the genuine CPM. I appeal to you all Comrades that if you really care for your party; if you really want your party’s betterment, then for once remove them from power. … you know that the party is completely rotten now.” Bratya Basu is so accurate! Many of the flies buzzing around Mamata Banerjee’s honeycomb today were convincingly buzzing around the ‘honeycomb of power’ just a few years ago but sadly failed to accumulate honey. His call for ‘Flies of Bengal unite!’ therefore has many followers today. And who else has the sound ability to construct the perfect stage for them except Mamata Banerjee?

To put across a genuine Leftist face, Mamata Banerjee and friends has now attempted to hijack major issues from the CPI(M)’s program book. This move became evident in the recently released TMC election manifesto where Mamata Banerjee allowed her ultra-left friends to bloom. Her loyal supporter media conglomerates were terribly disappointed with the ‘sweet nothings’ of her manifesto and sad because many of the pertinent issues of the manifesto looks as if copied from documents of the CPI(M)’s 17th Party Congress! With striking similarity with the longstanding CPI(M) demand, the TMC manifesto also demands that the States must be allocated 50 per cent of the Central revenue. The manifesto echoed the CPI(M) line when it spoke against the entry of foreign capital in the retail sector, when it opposed disinvestment in the public sector and said that developing local resources and skills are more important than embracing globalization. When it comes to elaborate the industrialization policy of TMC, the manifesto writes: “Agriculture must not be sacrificed at the altar of industry. Both should grow like twins… The Trinamul Congress wants industry but not at the cost of poor farmers”. It also advocated to form a land bank for industrial purpose and declared that SEZs (special economic zones) are bad because it causes environment pollution.

It is doubtful how much Mamata Banerjee really can make out of these bombastic words printed in her party manifesto. Instead, she is more recognizable when she reveals her fantastic future vision concerning Bengal. The TMC chieftain has sung a mesmerizing lullaby for her voters: she will transform the East Midnapore coastal town Digha into Goa, North Bengal into Switzerland and Kolkata into London! Assuring the electorates she also said that “If Trinamool Congress comes to power, we’ll show what is called development”. Clarifying to the bewildered journalists who asked how can the TMC thinks of coming to power in the State when the elections are being held for the Lok Sabha, the ‘girl next door’ politician replied, “I know this is just a Lok Sabha election. But what I want to say is that in future, if Trinamool comes to power in the State we will give shape to this vision.” (Source) How Goa, Switzerland or London fits with her true Leftist scheme is a question that remained unanswered. To appease the Muslim voters, she has affirmed that her party will back a non-BJP government at the center and pronounced that, “… a secular government cannot be one by the Bharatiya Janata Party…I now have made things clear for you”.

Grouped under the pseudonym Swajan (also known as Susheel Samaj), Mamata Banerjee’s intellectual friends now have decided to publish their own ‘manifesto’ in April on the eve of the Lok Sabha polls. (Source) This ‘historic manifesto’ is cogently drafted by Bibhas Chakrabarty, the big name of Bengali theatre with an impressive track record of splitting numerous Kolkata theater groups. Corresponding with the TMC manifesto, the ‘Swajan manifesto’ will also appeal to people to vote for a change. The TMC manifesto is dedicated to the cause of ‘ma, mati, manush’ (mother, soil and people) and speaks ambiguously about industrialization without farmland acquisition. The ‘Swajan manifesto’ similarly is expected to articulate the same line, putting stress on the importance of industrialization in Bengal but not ‘… at the cost of the farmer’s livelihood and by forcibly grabbing land from peasants.’ Both are deceitfully trying to dilute local and national issues, to greatly confuse the people and grab maximum advantage from their pivotal issue of Singur-Nandigram. Though the ‘Swajan manifesto’ will not ask people to vote for or against a particular party, ample hints will be there for the readers to understand which political party this ‘awake and aware’ group is suggesting to vote for or against. It will manifest that ‘a party that has been at the helm of power for more than a decade … is not healthy for democracy’ and will ask the people to be ‘…brave and not get pressurized to vote for a particular political party’. Echoing the sentiment, Bratya Basu wrote in his Jago Bangla article, “… I want that every five year there should be a political change in my State. As a citizen I have a right to demand this change. I really do not think that this change will bring good for everyone or exploitation and oppression will be abolished. All this will continue but in a lesser amount, the common people might live a slight better life.”

But what if the exploited and oppressed, poor and ordinary masses still vote against the TMC? What if the ‘historic manifesto’ turns into a ‘historic blunder’? In spite of the scrupulously crafted anti-Left Front agitation-propaganda for two long years, in a ‘fertile’ terrain where ‘all the Front constituents have lost touch with the common people’, a large section of people has still kept their confidence on the ‘tottering’ Left Front parties in 13 out of 18 district Panchayats. Instead of entirely wiping out the ‘unnerved’ Left Front in the recent Civic polls, they have elected them back with a thumping victory in crucial centers like tribal-dominated Jhargram of West Midnapore and Kolkata’s twin city Howrah.

Elated about their predicted success in the coming Lok Sabha and the subsequent State Assembly polls, Mamata Banerjee and friends are presently not willing to give any credit to cynical thoughts. But in reality, reaching their ultimate goal is a Herculean task. After all, the poor people of Bengal, especially the minorities and the oppressed sections of the society are not entirely trustworthy!

Mamata Banerjee image courtesy: sify.com
Protest rally image courtesy: internationalpost.blogspot.com
Suvaprasanna image courtesy: indiatimes.com
Bratya Basu image courtesy: hindu.com

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Kabir Suman: Mamata Banerjee’s cute ‘Muslim’ candidate

The Congress party (INC) high command has ultimately declared that their party will ally with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the coming Lok Sabha polls in Bengal. After hesitating for some time and begging behind her for no clear reason, the party has finally succumbed to Trinamool chieftain’s effectual arm-twisting. Gulping their own, the party high command has unconditionally accepted all of Mamata’s pre-poll terms and conditions. Though the alliance formula is virtually a sell-out of the Bengal Congress to Mamata's party which has caused extreme dejection of the genuine Congress workers of the state, party leaders sitting in Delhi are showing a brave face. Justifying this meek surrender at Mamata Banerjee’s feet, the tacticians of the Congress party has said that the alliance is shaped in accordance with the ‘aspiration’ of Bengal’s anti-left public – to prevent anti-left votes from splitting. It’s disgraceful to watch the worried face of a century old grand party uncertain about sustaining the minimal influence it holds in certain pockets of Bengal. Is it an alliance, seat adjustment or simple understanding? Will Trinamool cut off its tie with NDA? Is there a possibility of Trinamool joining UPA? All these questions remained unanswered. Obviously, both the sides are not sure enough about the post election scenario.

However, like in all previous elections in Bengal, there is an upbeat atmosphere deliberately manufactured by the local and national print/electronic media to project a sure collapse of the Left and a sure success of this dubious alliance. Apparatchik columnists are working overtime to establish that the Left has reached a tipping point in Bengal and after the TMC-INC alliance “voters have a genuine choice” to push them out.

In a recent article, one Delhi-based armchair economist/columnist is too keyed up to ensure that the readers see only what he desires them to see. By using selective and manipulated statistics that fits his impish agenda of portraying the Left governance in Bengal as a total failure, he has even exceeded Mamata Banerjee’s own estimation on the outcome of the coming election and forecasted 8 seats out of total 42 to the Left! In the same article he has also suggested that “The Left’s governance record doesn’t warrant its being voted back” and loftily counseled the Left that “…some years in opposition may be good”. By sheer excitement the stupid columnist has overlooked the fact that he is not writing in the context of an Assembly poll. The Parliamentary election outcome can’t depose or reinstate the Left in Bengal. Impatient he might feel today but he has no option but to wait till 2011 to know whether the people of Bengal has rejected the Left or not. Also, neither Mamata nor the Congress leaders are in a position to assure whether the present opportunistic alliance is going to continue after the polls or not.

To woo the influential Muslim voters of Bengal, the ecstatic Mamata is now flamboyantly displaying her Muslim compassion and is boastful about her four Muslim candidates. Launching her party’s election campaign from Nandigram, Mamata on Saturday has reportedly said how the Trinamool Congress has selectively placed their Muslim candidates in ‘winning’ seats only. The Left Front in comparison has assigned all ‘losing’ seats for their Muslim candidates to contest. It is hard to identify with this ‘winning seat-losing seat’ jargon as in the last election Trinamool had won only one seat! Interesting enough, one of her Muslim candidate is the infamous Kabir Suman, the agnostic-nihilist-anarchist and self proclaimed polygamous singer. Kabir Suman doesn't believe in the institution of marriage but amazingly has wed five times ‘out of deep respect for the woman’! (The Telegraph, 2 September 2007) Media report suggests that his former German wife Maria had dragged him to court on grounds of torture. His international career as a bride-groom is inert for now following his marriage with Sabina Yasmin, a noted singer from Bangladesh. As a requisite to marry Sabina, he embraced Islam and became a Muslim. Kabir Suman himself has given a different ‘progressive’ reason of his conversion: “I decided to get rid of my Hindu Brahmin identity on the day that Graham Staines and his two boys were burnt alive.” The Australian missionary Graham Staines and his sons were murdered in Keonjhar district of Orissa in January 1999 by Dara Singh, an affiliate of Bajrang Dal – the Hindu hooligan-activist group. The Bajrang Dal is intimately tied up with the hydra-headed RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) just like BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) – its political wing. In October the same year Mamata Banerjee had pompously joined the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and became the Railways Minister.

While announcing her list of female candidates, Mamata Banerjee evidently stated that people should not consider her as a ‘female’ at all as she thinks herself just ‘a human being’. She ‘belongs’ among everything and therefore is above any gender identity. By saying so she has cleared all anxiety from the minds of her devoted admirers who were getting quite nervous about Kabir Suman’s proximity and subsequent encroachment.

Kabir Suman is the only celebrity from the big names of Bengal’s intellectual fraternity and civil society campaigners of Singur-Nandigram agitation who has blissfully agreed to contest the polls with a Trinamool ticket. It is certainly a big disappointment not to find any other ‘awake and aware’ names in the Trinamool list! This ‘cultural crusader’, as the media loves to describe him, has passed adulatory remarks on Mamata to a TV channel immediately after his candidature was announced by her. He proclaimed that Mamata is not only necessary for Bengal or India but is also immensely crucial for the well being of the entire planet!

Recently, in a hot gathering of Trinamool party workers, Kabir Suman elevated his sycophancy to a newer level. He reportedly remarked that “Mamata does not just mean Mamata Banerjee. It means our soil, our earth, water and animals” and asked the party workers to start greeting each other by ‘Jai Mamata’. “Bengal never had any democracy. Today democracy is emerging …” he ecstatically reveled to the crowd. (see link) Kabir Suman carries a sly brain inside his head. Whether he will win the election or lose is a different question but it took him lesser time to grasp the cajoling culture of Trinamool.

In a sense Kabir Suman shares a reciprocal relationship with Mamata. Like Mamata, Kabir Suman also has a stinking mouth. In a protest gathering during the peak Nandigram days, Kabir Suman pulled a girl to the stage and yelled against the CPI(M) leaders, “Son of a whore Laxman Seth, dumbfuck Binoy Kongar, come and rape in CPM style…let’s see what you can do!” (see link) A good section of bhadrolok (gentleman) Bengalis were highly impressed by his ‘let’s kill three CPM everyday’ appeal as a bold and daring attempt to register protest against the CPI(M) ‘atrocities’. He had once enthralled his audience by turning his buttocks towards them and asking them to find out how sweet they are. Otherwise why do his critics, those who “don't have the brains or the balls to understand me” love to pinch them? This firebrand jack of all trades poet-lyricist-composer-singer-journalist-writer-actor-activist’s frequent and spontaneously disgorged F-words are also been appreciated by a section of the ‘cultured’ Bengali middle class who loves to see in him a Bengali Bob Dylan. They get emotionally tempted to admire this lexicon and irreverent attitude. One intense critic of CPI(M) has once furiously written (see link) that the enduring contribution of the thirty two-year rule of the CPI(M) in Bengal is “vulgarization of the Bengali language, vandalization of the Bengali culture”. Why can’t the author, a former Secretary to the Government of India, for once mention that the language of Kabir Suman is similarly “threatening the very basis of Bengali language”? He probably contemplates the language of Kabir Suman as a blow for blow response to the ‘vulgar’ CPI(M) and thus praiseworthy!

In the year 2001, Kabir Suman had created a great fuss when he claimed to receive a phone call threatening to blow up his house. Immediately this former VOA (Voice of America) employee started distributing a chain of e-mails to his friends and well-wishers using a Bangladesh-based website. He wrote in the mail that though he was “…quite used to such threats since 1993” things have become “even worse now” and he is “not feeling safe in Kolkata”. He also alleged that “I have never felt secure in this city and in this state”. (The Times of India, 10 September 2001) This deceitful and obnoxious plot was hatched by him to establish his core agenda: how dangerously unsafe Kolkata has become under the Left rule (read CPIM rule) where a law abiding citizen, especially a ‘Muslim’ like him can be so easily threatened. This is a typical Mamata Banerjee style gimmickry and deception that Kabir Suman has flawlessly adopted. However we still remember that the same law abiding citizen was once reprimanded by the Kolkata police because he was found to be abusing and threatening a popular Bengali screen actor every night on telephone.

Kabir Suman’s entrance into the Bengal cultural milieu in the early 1990s with songs dotted with sympathetic social commentary and bouts of progressivism had acted as a balm on the urban emotions of Bengali youth. In his songs he articulated about his dream of bringing a change in the system, a dream very near and dear to the heart of Bengali middle class. He sang about his hope to see worldwide collective farms before dying, sang about familiar anger, rages and unknown reconciliation, on endless longing for a classless society, about unsung victims and heroes, about the disgust, disdain and adoration of urban life. His lyrics were highly critical about vote bank politics, has ‘artistically and intellectually’ criticized the mainstream communist parties for adapting the path of parliamentary democracy. His advice to the Rajus and Amits of the younger generation was to keep away from vote politics and bombs which he considered equally dangerous for their future. Today after his candidature was announced, the same Kabir Suman has said, “If anything has to be changed it has to be through parliamentary democracy.” To him, “Trinamool Congress is not merely a political party, it is a movement.” Days are not far when we will see him pronouncing that Trinamool Congress is the only political party and Mamata Banerjee is the only leader ‘not only in Bengal or India but in the entire planet’ that will bring to an end his ‘endless longing for a classless society'.

The French writer Andre Gide once said that a true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception and lies with sincerity. The words of Gide fittingly delineates Mamata Banerjee’s cute and celebrity ‘Muslim’ candidate Kabir Suman.

Image courtesy: newshopper.sulekha.com

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What’s happening in Bangladesh?

From the 25th of February, disturbing news started coming in from Bangladesh. The Pilkhana headquarters of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) in Dhaka was seized by a mutiny and at least sixty-four army officers along with seven non-army personals including women and children were massacred by the mutineers. The dead includes the BDR chief Major General Shakil Ahmed and other high ranking officers. The killings mainly happened in the ‘Darbar Hall’ inside the BDR premise during the annual gathering of BDR commanders and according to the few survivors most of the killings were done between 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. on the first day. After killing the senior officers, the mutineers stormed the residential officer’s quarters, attacked and dragged out the family members and set the quarters on fire. Gold ornaments, jewelries and money were looted. The dead bodies were disfigured with bayonets and later dumped into nearby sewers and mass graves inside the BDR compound. The full horror of the mutiny became evident when bodies of the slain officers including the wife of the Director General were recovered. The mutiny was also reported to have spread to twelve border districts of the country including Dinajpur, Chittagong, Rajshahi and Naugaon.

Intense rumors of an imminent army take-over soon spread out like wildfire all over Bangladesh. But according to media report, the army chief Moin Ahmed assured Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by saying that “Rumors are swirling… but the army belongs to you.” His force remained loyal to the civilian government which took over power just in December last year after a landslide victory in the general elections. This assurance reinforced the government to deal with the situation with firm resolve. It was Hasina’s insistence for a political solution of the crisis that the army kept itself away from any direct confrontation with the mutineers. Sheikh Hasina herself met fourteen representative leaders of the BDR rebels and after discussing their grievances initially announced to grant them amnesty. Various leaders and ministers including the Home Minister Sahara Khatun were busy throughout the night to keep dialogues between the government and rebel soldiers open. In a daring act, Ms. Khatun and State Minister Jahangir Kabir Nanak entered the BDR premise at midnight and rescued an injured officer and forty family members who were held hostage by the rebels. However, when all sorts of negotiation failed to make the mutineers to surrender, the government strategically started mobilizing the Army on the second day. Eleven tanks moved in to encircle the Pilkhana complex; people living near the BDR headquarters were evacuated. Hasina addressed the nation in a televised statement and appealed to the troops to surrender the arms. Finally, on 26th of February between 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. the unnerved rebels surrendered by laying down their arms. By then, many of the rebel soldiers had fled their posts. Two hundred mutineers were arrested while trying to escape in civilian outfits. The police started a massive manhunt ‘Operation Rebel Hunt’ throughout the country to capture the fugitive masterminds of the revolt and soon arrested BDR's Deputy Assistant Director Touhidul Alam and four other suspects. According to an official estimate, about two thousand suspected mutineers are still absconding. The government later clarified that the general amnesty announced by Sheikh Hasina will not be applicable for the masterminds who was directly involved with the planning and killings.

Formerly known as East Pakistan Rifles, BDR is presently a 67,000-strong paramilitary force deployed to guard the 4,427 kilometer long Bangladesh boarders with India and Myanmar with additional anti-smuggling operational charge. The force revolted in 1971 against the West Pakistan army by joining the Bangladesh liberation war. After the emergence of Bangladesh the force was renamed as Bangladesh Rifles and emerged as the new country’s leading paramilitary force. BDR administration is mostly controlled by officers from the Bangladesh Army.

Rebel leaders speaking to private television channels affirmed that the mutiny was directed primarily against the corruption of their officers who came from the army. According to them, the other central reasons of the uprising were the disparity of pay, benefits, working conditions and promotional opportunities as compared to their army counterparts. Their 22-point demand includes withdrawal of army officers from the command structure of BDR. The mutineers were initially successful to represent the uprising as a class conflict between exploitive officers and exploited soldiers and accused the officers as abusive and utterly insensitive towards the woes of ordinary soldiers. They claimed that their long-standing grievances were repeatedly raised before the authorities but all fell on deaf ears. Unofficial reports suggested that BDR Director General had promised to discuss their grievances with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina but failed to keep his promise when Hasina visited the barracks on 24 February to inaugurate the BDR week events. The uprising might be partly impulsive though there are ample reasons to suggest that there could be a ‘deep-rooted conspiracy’ behind it.

Since Bangladesh was born in 1971 there were several big and small coup attempts in the country. The country’s history of army coups started in 1975 when Sheikh Hasina’s father, the country's iconic founder president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was brutally assassinated along with his wife and three sons by junior officers of Bangladesh army. Given its history of coups and counter coups, the first thing that obviously appeared in the mind from the uprising was that the country was heading for another coup. The present army leadership’s credible pro-democracy stance has negated this proposition. The cross-border theory of a ‘bigger conspiracy’ involving Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) which has strong pockets of influence in the BDR came next. It suggested that the violence was the handiwork of the ISI, aimed to spoil growing ties between Sheikh Hasina’s government and India. The ISI also wanted to signal India about its capability to stall New Delhi’s growing influence in Bangladesh. Indian media came up with the story of Salauddin Qadeer Chowdhury, a senior Bangladeshi businessman and BNP politician. Involving Chowdhury with the conspiracy for having close links with the ISI, the media reports also stated that the original planning was hatched in Pakistan and then passed on to radical Islamist organizations operating in Bangladesh like the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HUJI). Differing to the Indian side story, conspiracy theories were floated within Bangladesh which claimed that India’s external intelligence agency RAW was involved to revenge the death of nineteen of their Border Security Force (BSF) personals killed by the BDR at Padua of Sylhet and Boraibari of Roumary in 2001. The name of Britain based Islamist organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir also popped up which for the last couple of years is known to reckon Bangladesh as its area of interest.

Was it really a deliberate and well crafted attempt to incite the army to apply force, take over power and subsequently destabilize the new democratically elected government? Questions were asked why the mutineers had brutally killed the officers and their family members instead of following the usual method to accomplish their demands by holding the army officers as hostages. The modus operandi of the uprising and latest developments emerging from the investigation is supporting this speculation. Investigators have started gathering evidences which are contrary to the initial perception that the uprising stemmed out of grievances. The perpetrators might have exploited the deprived feelings of the common BDR men and motivated a section of them in the heinous act. Latest revelation from the investigation hints about the presence of uniformed outsiders during the massacre. BDR soldiers who had fled Pilkhana through the back doors and now reporting back are claiming that masked soldiers brandishing guns and firing blank shots forced them to join the revolt. Whatever might be the truth, one thing is certain. The evolving events do suggest that Hasina’s government is fronting an extremely intricate problem to deal with. It has to move cautiously otherwise the ramification could turn disastrous.

Sheikh Hasina’s well-known pro-India stand has caused enough displeasure to the pro-Pakistan elements of Bangladesh. Fingers of suspicion are been pointed towards the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami, their extensive network of grassroot organizations and the former Razakar and Al-Badars – who has regrouped within the Jamaat fold. These are the atrocious elements that had collaborated with the Pakistan Army during the nine months long Bangladesh’s Mukti Juddho (liberation war) and staged the mass genocide of millions of their own people and enforced million others to flee to neighboring India as refugees. After Mujibur Rahman was assassinated, Zia Ur Rahman helped to resettle these Islamist collaborators in Bangladesh politics. He legalized Jamaat-e-Islami as a political party, allowed them to carry on with their vicious socio-political activities and had also permitted Jamaat leader Golam Azam to return to Bangladesh from his exile. Azam’s citizenship was previously nullified by Mujibur Rahman for his resolute opposition to creation of Bangladesh. After the resettlement, Jamaat-e-Islami continued to flourish and strengthened their base at the time of General Hossain Mohammad Ershad’s regime in areas like Chittagong, Sylhet and Rajshahi and steadily became politically important in Bangladesh. Jamaat allied with Zia Ur Rahman’s wife Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), lead a four-party coalition government during 2001-2006 and held two Ministries in the government. There is little doubt that Jamaat-e-Islami has a sizeable presence in the country’s rural areas and their fanatic Mullahs has infested enough Pan-Islamic religious extremism and hatred among the illiterate and poor populace. The BDR rank and file is drawn mainly from these economically backward and poor rural belts.

These elements are infuriated and deeply worried about Hasina's plans to set up a war-crimes tribunal to put on trial the collaborators of West Pakistani army. In the second week of February, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari had sent his special envoy to Dhaka and pressurized the Bangladesh government to retract from the trial which the government immediately turned down. By pulling the ear, the head comes along – besides a number of Jamaat leaders, some of the bigwigs of Khaleda Zia’s BNP could also be in genuine trouble if the government goes ahead with the trial. Hasina has also announced that she will not allow Bangladesh’s soil to be used as a haven for terrorist activities. Her government has promised to eliminate terrorist camps in Bangladesh and to restrain ISI operations from Bangladesh territory. All these factors are enough to incite rage and enmity among co-religionist and Pan-Islamic elements against the present government and army leadership. From their extremist inspiration these elements apparently might have tried to send a warning to the government that it should restrain from implementing their secular-democratic agenda.

Historically, Bangladesh’s political style has always been marked by its confrontational nature. This style of politics was introduced during the liberation movement when the political class, bureaucrats, army, students, elites and intellectuals became divided either into pro-liberation or pro-Pakistan camps. This hate-inspired division has eventually created a gravely corrupt political system and weak institutions. This sense of hatred has been aggravated by centralization of power in the hands of the executive class. Taking advantage of the chaotic state of Bangladesh politics that prevailed following the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the army directly got involved into the political sphere to play the role of the savior, fingered external relations and consequently demolished the democratic values. The subsistence of successive post-Mujib regimes heavily depended on the army support. The present army leadership appears to be committed for democratic values and is free from Islamist bias. This is a positive sign for Bangladesh’s future in contrast to the lopsided role the army has opted so far.

Bangladesh is still one of the poorest countries in the world. Concentrating on the precarious economic situation is therefore the utmost job of the new government. Sanitizing a corrupt political system and standing firm against rampant corruption in the high offices is also another major objective to attain. It also needs to carefully address the menace of religious fundamentalist elements in its society. Whether in Bangladesh, India or Pakistan, the face of religious fundamentalism is common. It is always autocratic, brutal and driven primarily by hatred. In a society where most of the people are illiterate and miserably trapped in poverty and religious inducement, the incidence of the BRD mutiny will remain a matter of deep concern.

Image courtesy: bbc.co.uk

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Reassessing 'Agantuk' - Satyajit Ray’s final statement as an artist

In the year 1991 Satyajit Ray made Agantuk (The Stranger), his last film before his death in April 1992. Here, Ray made a unique attempt to convey his annoyance about the materialistic quest of modern civilization through his characteristic storytelling style. The film depicts how the protagonist uncle Manomohan Mitra’s sudden landing into a conventional milieu of hosts made a panicky effect on them and exposed their priggish pride as a sham. The uncle was initially suspected as a fraud and later assumed to be a person with an insular objective to ‘fill his empty pockets’. In fact the depiction in the film turns into a near perfect surgical analysis of not only the benevolent protagonist but his mean-minded middle class hosts. It uncovered a terrible status of the modern urban middle class – acutely selfish and self centered, extremely money driven, always worried about security and hypocrite to the core. When at the end, taking account of his host’s ‘hospitality’, the altruistic uncle simply leaves the million dollar cheque of his inherited money as a small message ‘of little or no value’ for them, it falls like a slap on the face of the middle class smugness. The only member of the host family who was totally unsuspicious about Manomohan from the beginning was his grandnephew - the host’s little son. He was the first to convincingly declare that his grandfather is not a fake but genuine. The child has not yet been infected by the synthetic worldview of his parents and is yet to become a slave of conventional habits. His innocent and keen observations of his grandfather were the only one which was without any prejudices.

In many ways Agantuk is an inciting film. Though there is a genuine doubt if at all the grungy middle class can really think today in the way Ray wanted them to think. The basic theme is an intellectual soul searching for a re-discovery of the lost human values. It bluntly focuses on the vices of the post-modern world. The reckless immorality of the elite class, their greed for material possessions is harshly criticized. A ‘civilized’ person was defined as the person who can wipe out an entire population with lethal weapon by just pressing a button but has awfully forgotten how to embrace an alien stranger! The contradictions of high-rise and rickshaw pullers, NASA and ‘NESHA’ (drug addiction), technology and organized religion, the phenomenal decay of principles and values, the deep rooted systemic corruption and the death of curiosity are among some of the dark hidden corners of civilization that Ray has scornfully declared in Agantuk as ‘symbols of civilization’. How can the tangibility of a person's identity be proved through a passport in a fraudulent world? Who is civilized and who is savage? Class, caste and religion, values and prejudices, politics and power really have no place in the concrete humanity and morality that Ray has articulated throughout the film. Through his quest and vast experience of life Manomohan has recognized the brotherhood of Man which is beyond any country, language, cast or religion and free of any form of identity crisis. Ray’s own beliefs become clear when he speaks through Manomohan that, “I do not believe anything that divides Man – religion does it, and organized religion does it certainly. For the same reason I do not believe in caste…” According to him, caste and religion in the present form is only spreading hate and dividing Man. Technological achievements may well become counter-productive to provoke blatant greed. Modern civilization boasts on the achievements of science but forgets that it was the Neolithic age when Man had already made most of the indispensable inventions crucial for his survival.

Agantuk has two discern layers. The upper layer of the film deals with the problems of the urban middle class morals. This layer is relatively easy to recognize while viewing the film. In this layer Ray is mercilessly probing the harmful effects of money, the artificiality of values, the idiocy of war, the emptiness of an acquisitive worldview and the absurdity of identity. But there is also another deeper and subtle layer that exists side by side with the upper layer which apparently looks abstract. It deals with a much wider gamut of pertinent issues. This layer is inciting the viewer to position him/her in front of the history of human race to re-discover the natural Man in relation to his social state.

Honestly speaking, the anthropological aspects of the film were not Ray’s own. He had often spoken about how Agantuk was inspired by the thinking of the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. In his works Lévi-Strauss had firmly stressed that the mind and intelligence of the primitive savage people were certainly not inferior to civilized people. The universe of the primitives and of the civilized is different due to the approach in which primitive and civilized people conceptualized their world. The savage mind according to Lévi-Strauss is equally logical ‘in the same sense and the same fashion’ as the civilized minds and therefore no negative value could be attributed to it.

In his memoir Tristes Tropiques, Lévi-Strauss had revealed that in every part of the world and in every forms of society, whether savage or civilize, human beings has always followed its own styles and methods of thinking and has structured unlimited social systems for themselves. Every society is a product of the inescapable norms of these systems. The systems originate from the human thought process and then are applied in real life practices. The application of systems to reach the objectives of life might differ in time and space according to the cultural values of a specific society. This diversity is caused mainly by the different thought processes and its conclusion which evokes from the diverse reality of a particular time. The physical world is approached and conceptualized by the savage thought process in a supremely concrete way where the point of view originates from the sensible qualities of the savage mind. On the other end, civilized humans apply a supremely abstract method in their thought process which is derived from the formal properties of their civilized minds.

Whenever the strangeness of the primitive world is unintelligible to the people of the civilized world, the reality of the primitive people is viewed by them as ridiculous and disgusting. Frustrated by the inability to comprehend the culture and values remote from them, the primitive reality becomes insignificant, a ‘vanished reality’. This ignorance then becomes an excuse for the modern mechanistic civilization to gradually trap, overcome and finally destroy the radically different society of the primitives. As Lévi-Strauss has pointed out, human societies or individual human beings never create absolutely but “choose certain combinations from a repertory of ideas which it should be possible to reconstitute.” The values and social norms of the primitives are therefore important. To understand another system one needs to be tolerant, reflective and curious. Sadly, the mechanistic civilization by and large has lost these qualities.

Lévi-Strauss has asserted that, “Certain social groups must be adjudged superior to ourselves, if the comparison rests upon their success in reaching objectives comparable to our own…” The phenomenal evolution of human beings from anthropoid apes to modern man is the greatest evidence of this success. Certain civilizations of the past knew quite well how best to solve the same problems which the modern civilized society is still struggling to solve today. If one can diversify the field of investigation into different societies it will “eventually become plain that no human society is fundamentally good: but neither is any of them fundamentally bad; all offer their members certain advantages…” Cannibalism is considered to be the most horrible, disgusting and ‘uncivilized’ of all savage practices. But according to Lévi-Strauss, “…no society is proof, morally speaking, against the demands of hunger. In times of starvation men will eat literally anything, as we lately saw in the Nazi extermination camps.” By looking from outside one could be easily tempted to distinguish two opposing types of society. But once one had “lived as they live, and eaten as they eat, one well knew what hunger could be, and how the satisfaction of that hunger brought not merely repletion, but happiness itself.” Every form of society thus has its own impurity within itself that “finds outlet in elements of injustice, cruelty, and insensitivity.” Societies which seem to be brutal may turn out, to be reasonably humane and benevolent when examined from another point of view. By nature, no society is perfect. Claiming one form of society as superior in its relation to all the others is thus a shameful stupidity. In Agantuk, the representation of the Bison of Altamira convincingly explains this point.

In a most bizarre way, the honest provocation generated by Ray in the film has stirred his detractors. He is criticized as an ‘armchair liberal functioning as a simple humanist’ who is placing his ‘hopes and disillusionment on some grass-root cultural activity’ and on the innocence of children. Is he not oversimplifying social reality by viewing it as an ‘individual vs. society conflict’? Is he not an old fashioned, anti-progressive artist under a humanist cloak trying to spread pessimism? Do not forget that Ray was accused by similar criticism for romanticizing India’s poverty for foreign consumption in his seminal work Pather Panchali. These are stupid arguments essentially stimulated to achieve solace from envious intellectual melancholy of the present time and its flatulence from indigested modernity.

Ray did not profess for the primitive form of society which many of his critics thought he did. He has simply chosen a middle path where Shakespeare, Tagore, Marx and Freud can equally contribute along with the experience and values of primitive ancestors. While he has harshly criticized the war mentality of the civilized world, similarly he has disapproved the tribal custom of polygamy. His intention was to raise relevant issues from a certain perspective which can stir his audience to look differently. As a genuine artist, Ray did not intend to show the solution but tried to guide the audience to find one. Agantuk assists to shift the focus of the civilized world towards re-evaluating its root.

Similarly, Ray has definitely not spoken about any individual vs. society conflict in the film. He got the fundamental idea from Lévi-Strauss to put up incisive interrogations on society and culture as a whole. Is it possible to take an unbiased view of customs and ways of life distant from one’s own? Is it possible to doubt the rightness or naturalness of the customs of the civilized society instead of taking it for granted? Is it possible to find a middle way between the primitive and modern values? How to find elements from other societies and make use of them that will help the civilized world to reform its own customs? How to gather experiences from a remote culture and get enriched by them? Is it possible to unravel what in the present nature of Man is original, and what is artificial? Is it possible to re-discover the natural Man in his relation to the social state he belongs to? Even if we believe, how do we prove that other societies may not be better than our own?

The level of depth inscribed in the oeuvre of Satyajit Ray’s films is unique. In the age of the banality of Slumdog Millionaire and the hoopla surrounding an overcooked myth of Bollywood’s theory of culture, it is worth talking about Ray and his phenomenal artistic mastery.

Altamira Bison image: chenzhaofu.cn

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The Lifetime Achievement of L. K. Advani

Lal Krishna Advani, the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is generally believed to be a Hindu hardliner politician largely liable for polarizing India on communal lines. Leaving behind trails of blood and communal passions, his infamous Rath Yatra had created a sort of hysterical upsurge of the Hindutva forces during the Ram Janmbhoomi movement that lead to the eventual demolition of the Babri Masjid. His Rath Yatra is also credited to be the pivotal force behind the speedy and almost smooth rise of BJP as an alternative of the Congress Party in different parts of the country. Advani believes that the shrewd construction of the Hindutva hysteria is one of his most important contributions to the country and its people. Though the Hindutva card along with its chief architect has apparently lost its original shine and luster, the revered television media group New Delhi Television (NDTV) has considered giving him a face-lift by bestowing a Lifetime Achievement Award in their fourth ‘Indian of the Year’ award ceremony this year (see video here). Keeping aside NDTV founder and chairman Dr. Prannoy Roy, the juries of the award selection committee comprising Fali Nariman, Shashi Tharoor, Anu Agha, Rahul Bajaj, Harsha Bhogle and William Dalrymple reportedly did not select Advani. They were actually unaware that such an award was going to be bestowed on Advani in the function. According to the media watchdog Hoot, two of the juries were uncomfortable about the choice and particularly one among them later said that ‘he would not want to be associated with any award which gave prizes to communal hatemongers.’ Clarifying the selection process, Prannoy Roy later said that NDTV always reserves the right for its editors to select and present one or more non-jury awards. This clarification made it crystal clear that Advani’s selection was done by none other but entirely by the NDTV coterie.

Founded on 1988, NDTV started out with just one weekly programme called The World This Week in the state owned Doordarshan channel. Later in 1998, it bagged the ‘prestigious’ contract to produce a 24-hour news channel for Rupert Murdoch's Star Network. Today it is the largest independent private television production house in India. Its flagship news channel NDTV 24x7 holds the biggest market share among English news channels in the country. It is the only Indian channel which broadcasts in Pakistan, has launched a 24 hour NDTV Arabia for Middle East and North Africa and broadcast programs in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, Middle East, Mauritius, South Africa, Europe, US, Canada & New Zealand.

In the year 2002, NDTV (then the producer of Star News) had invited the ire of Hindutva forces particularly for its coverage of the Gujarat riots. Though widely credited for airing un-biased, courageous, insightful, and comprehensive news that had unmasked the State Government’s role in the pogrom, Star News was severely criticized for ‘indulgence in gossip’, for insisting that the Army’s deployment was unduly delayed during the riots and for interviewing the Ahmedabad police commissioner in an ‘arrogant and hectoring tone’. The channel “carried some graphic footage and interviews in the thick of the riots – in Ahmedabad and along the Vadodara-Godhra highway where a number of industrial establishments and trucks were burnt” and also broadcasted an extremely moving interview with the intrepid activist of communal harmony Professor J.S Bandukwala – whose house was attacked and torched by vicious Hindu mob in Vadodara during the riots. Star’s behind the news stories by correspondence Shikha Trivedi portrayed the “trauma and alienation of the Muslim communities and individuals who returned to their villages on sufferance, and in the ways in which tribal communities have been co-opted into the Hindutva fold”. (Subarno Chattarji: Media representations of the Kargil War and the Gujarat riots, Sarai Reader 2004) Obviously, pro-Hindu outfits and under the cloak communalists from the affluent middle class harshly condemned the coverage as biased and ‘full of white lies’. Its ace reporter Barkha Dutt’s car was surrounded on a Gujarat highway by fanatics armed with swords and asked “what’s your religion?” NDTV crew had to cry ‘Jai Sri Ram’ before their vehicles were allowed to move. (Editors Guild Fact Finding Mission Report on Gujarat Riot, May 3, 2002) Barkha Dutt’s reporting on a violence hit 90 km rural stretch where not even a single police constable was found to be present infuriated the authorities at Gandhinagar and New Delhi. Accordingly, orders were issued by the Gujarat government to district headquarters to block the Star News channel. On March 2 the channel was blocked for several hours. Lal Krishna Advani was then the home minister of the country. The coverage of Star News was termed by his party as ‘pseudo secular’.

It is therefore almost bizarre to see that the same NDTV which in 2002 had helped to expose the Gujarat pogrom perpetrated by Hindutva fanatics under a fully supportive state BJP government and a partly supportive NDA government at the center is honoring the ‘one and only’ Advani in 2009 with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in the field of politics! What would have changed in these seven years that obliged NDTV to hand over the award to Advani is a perplexing question to answer. One of the supposed reasons is that the award was bestowed to Advani to make sure that he attends the award ceremony. But this cannot be the only reason.

After receiving the honor, the ‘intelligent, thinking and unpredictable’ Advani (as Prannoy Roy has described him) said that “One of my positive experience, which many in the country seem to see as a negative, was my Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya. I really think that by that Rath Yatra, I was able to convert the nature of the debate that was taking place before those years, which was that my party is communal and other parties are secular. I just converted the debate to genuine secularism versus pseudo secularism.”

Public memory is short and needs to be refreshed time after time. From NDTV’s award ceremony dais Advani was in fact bloating about his original Rath Yatra of 1990 that began from September 23 to ‘unite Hindus’ on an anti-Muslim agenda. The decision to launch the Rath Yatra was Advani’s anxious response to the threat of the then Prime Minister V. P. Singh’s decision to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations and was obviously attempted to grasp the influential but drifting voters of the backward classes. Jointly planned with the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leadership, the Rath Yatra eventually caused deep polarization of the Indian society by inflaming communal passion and had incited people to trigger brutal and violent communal outbursts. Until it was stopped at Samastipur by the then Chief Minister of Bihar Laloo Prasad Yadav on October 23, thirty-nine places through which Advani’s Ram Rath had passed were affected by communal violence. Nearly 275 people were killed in these clashes.

In an interview with The Sunday Times of October 14, 1990 Advani characteristically remarked that “I am sure that everyone knows that it (the Rath Yatra) has provided a healing touch; it has not caused any tensions or has not inflamed passions” (Emphasis added). The jubilant Advani then went on saying that his Rath Yatra has ‘manifested and articulated’ the sentiments of the Hindus in ‘a powerful fashion’. The following media reports will undoubtedly prove this manifestation and articulation of the ‘Hindus’ Advani was so proud about. An editorial in the October 5, 1990 issue of The Times of India remarked that, “Communal riots have already broken out in Baroda and Banaskantha. It is difficult not to see the connection between the Rath Yatra and the Ram Jyoti campaigns on the one hand and the heightening of communal tensions in different parts of the country… If Mr. Advani is concerned about the unity and integrity of the country and stands for the defence of law and order, he should reconsider his course.” An article in The Sunday Observer, dated October 14, 1990 had reported instances of mounting tensions in Mysore, Mangalore, parts of Bangalore city and North Karnataka. It had also expressed deep concern that communal violence has ‘succeeded in penetrating the villages’ like in Chennapatna where an entire hamlet of Muslim farmers were burned and in Kolar district where “Muslim houses in several villages have been reported to have been attacked by unknown outsiders.” The report also stated that, “There is no doubt whatsoever, that the Muslim community bore the brunt of the rioting, both in terms of lives lost and property damaged – of the 17 dead, 13 were Muslims.” The Telegraph dated October 14, 1990 reported about the Rath Yatra impact on Uttar Pradesh stating “…even before Mr. Advani’s rath has entered the state, the death toll in communal clashes has gone up to 44.…When the rath moved into Maharashtra from Surat, the armed Bajrang Dal activists were less prominent – but the speeches of the BJP leaders were as full of venom…” The same report described how at Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh, “… Mr Pramod Mahajan, the BJP leader in the course of a fiery speech asked the Muslims to either have faith in Lord Ram or else leave the country. Mr. Advani all the while nodded in acquiescence and the hundreds of youths who surrounded the podium brandished their swords and trishuls and hailed the speech. The result, of course, was inevitable: communal clashes broke out in Raipur” (Emphasis added). On November 2, 1990 The Independent reported that the pre-planning of the communal riots in Indore were “…evident from the large haul of stored arms and weapons from several houses …” On the October 28, 1990 issue, The Telegraph reported how communal flare-up rocked Jhalda in Purulia district of West Bengal “…claiming 9 lives, is a direct fall-out of the rathyatra of Mr. LK Advani which passed through the town on October 20.” (Source: Communalism Combat, April 2001) These are some of the fantastic examples of ‘genuine secularism’ for which today Advani is swollen with pride.

The champion of Hindu communalists, the lauh purush (ironman) of BJP has recently assured his henchmen that “the party had not forgotten Ram”. The Indian Express reported from Nagpur that Advani asked his party men: “Ram ke janmasthan mein Ram ka mandir kyon nahin banna chahiye (why should there not be a temple at the birthplace of Ram at Ayodhya?)” This reveals the true face of Lal Krishna Advani – communal to the core and notoriously devious. His entire intellectual jargons including terms like ‘pseudo-secularism’ or ‘minorytism’ are in fact not his invention at all but copied from the lexicon of the parental Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangha (RSS). As pointed out by A. G. Noorani, “Advani can never be original. He needs intellectual crutches.” His essentially manipulative vocabulary is deceitful to its core and is extremely dangerous to trust.

What truly sickening and disgraceful to see was how a culpable crime committed against the pluralistic Indian society has been publicized as a ‘positive instance’ from the ceremonial dais of a media house that distinguishes itself as a champion of secularism.

Image courtesy: www.hinduonnet.com

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The megalomania of Barkha Dutt

Ms. Barkha Dutt, the Managing Editor-English News of the ‘highly influential’ Indian news channel New Delhi Television (NDTV) is surely an honorable person. She is striking, concerned and caring, widely acclaimed as an impressive and intrepid journalist and certainly a celebrity. During the Mumbai terror attacks, she positioned herself with a broken voice on ground zero to dispatch continuous news bytes for her channel. It was the filmmaker Shyam Benegal who had to remind her about the class biases of her coverage that has surprisingly forgotten the ‘insignificant’ victims of CST railway station. To clear her conscience, she brought Shameem, a man who has lost six members of his family at the CST in her talk-show ‘We the People’ and with a teary eye and clogged voice sensationalized the viewers by interviewing this hapless man. On the same show her conspicuous guest Simi Garewal disgorged this irresponsible and stupid remark: “…look down from the top floor at the slums around you. Do you know what flags you will see? Not the Congress’, not the BJP’s, not the Shiv Sena’s. Pakistan! Pakistani flags fly high!” By turning emotional in her own show, Ms. Dutt in a melodramatic voice revealed that during the terrible three days she did not find anyone who was not acquainted with a victim of the terror strikes. The victims she had mentioned about were evidently not the massacred ones in the CST railway station but mostly high society elites from the Taj, Oberoi and Trident. She later tried to clarify that the hotels were focused as ‘sites of the live encounters’ and was not a ‘deliberate socio-economic prejudice’. Indeed, some of her prejudices are so deep-rooted that she fails to recognize them.

Soon, her coverage of the audacious attacks started to instigate extensive criticism in social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut for too much sensationalism. The criticism was mostly sappy reactions by Indian Internet users who were naturally outraged by the appalling atrocity. Barkha Dutt was accused for ‘broadcasting sensitive information about the position of hostages and security troops’ and for ‘sensationalizing the news coverage’. Newswatch, a media watchdog based in New Delhi had carried out a survey on the television news coverage of the incident and found that “Barkha Dutt of NDTV was thought to be the most theatrical/worst anchors/reporters”. Though Subir Ghosh, editor of Newswatch portal has clarified that “since this was an online survey the results would also mean the opinion gathered was that of India’s Internet users only, and not that of the people as a whole. The survey results, unfortunately, leave out rural India from its ambit. In that sense, this survey is as elitist as the coverage ….”

On 27 November 2008, Chyetanya Kunte, an Indian blogger living in the Netherlands wrote a post ‘Shoddy journalism’ in his blog http://ckunte.com/ and harshly accused Barkha Dutt for breaking ‘every rule of ethical journalism in reporting the Mumbai mayhem’. Though the post was perceived by Ms. Dutt as a ‘hate’ campaign against her, it was actually Kunte’s personal views which had erupted out of agony, frustration and anger while he was viewing the coverage of the on going mayhem on television. Kunte found the coverage careless and repugnant. He felt that it was actually helping the terrorists with vital information that might have jeopardized the lives of people trapped in the occupied buildings and remarked that, “You do not need to be a journalist to understand the basic premise of ethics, which starts with protecting victims first…” He had also cited a Wikipedia reference about allegation against Ms. Dutt’s channel for ‘giving away locations in her broadcasts, thus causing Indian casualties’ during the Kargil war. Kunte’s allegations are debatable but he was not the lone accuser in this occasion. Along with him, thousands of television viewers were similarly upset by the numb coverage of the Mumbai carnage by Indian news channels.

Shockingly, Kunte’s emotional fury was picked up by Barkha Dutt as comments by ‘a certain Mr. Kunte’ who has targeted the ‘character, morality and integrity’ of herself and her channel. NDTV promptly issued a legal notice against Kunte which was confirmed by Ms. Dutt in Facebook where she wrote that, “Mr. Kunte has been served a legal notice for libel by NDTV. That should give you some indication of where we and I stand. The freedom afforded by the Internet cannot be used to fling allegations at individuals or groups in the hope that they will then respond to things that aren't worthy of engagement.” Can we ask who is Barkha Dutt to decide how ‘freedom afforded by the Internet’ should be used? On 26 January 2009, Kunte was forced to publish a post captioned ‘Unconditional Withdrawal of my post “Shoddy Journalism” dated November 27th 2008’ in his blog where he has tendered ‘an unconditional apology to Ms. Barkha Dutt, Managing Editor, English News, NDTV Limited and to NDTV Limited, for the defamatory statements’ and stated that he has ‘agreed with Ms. Barkha Dutt and NDTV to publish this statement as a means of settlement’. Subsequently, the original post was deleted from the blog. Chyetanya Kunte became an unfortunate victim of the megalomania of Ms. Dutt and NDTV.

The incidence is startling. Not only because it has exposed the malevolent side of the imposing face of NDTV, India's largest private television production house but also because the incident has exposed how a prime television media house and its famed Managing Editor can easily become prickly about venial criticism. It is similarly startling to observe how arrogant a television news channel can be when confronted with uncomfortable questions from its very own audience. It looks more odd when the same NDTV adopts the role of conscience-keeper and become instrumental in arousing public anger against the government and politicians, invites stupid guests in serious looking talk-shows to deliver stupid lectures on matters of public concern, interviews hapless relatives of the victims to make ‘story’ out of their mental anguish. All of these were plainly, as Miss Dutt explains in the NDTV website, to ‘touch upon the human dimension’ to the story. As if the people of India needed to be spoon-fed by her channel about how callous their politicians are and how sad and hopeless one feels when a near and dear one is held hostage by brutal terrorists. In capital letters Miss Dutt has clarified that ‘they WANTED to talk’. How is she so sure about that? If it was important for her to cover the views of those who WANTED to talk rightly or wrongly, in a similar logic it must also be important for those who rightly or wrongly wanted to criticize her role. She had also tried to assure her viewers that “…it is important to understand that in the absence of any instructions on site and in the absence of any such framework we broke NO rules.” Here, she has assigned herself in a duel role – both as the law breaker and the law maker.

In recent times, the Internet has provided independent voice to individuals who in the past were rarely capable to express and exchange their views and opinions on issues of public concern. Accepting this wonderful opportunity, many laypeople have started expressing themselves through social networking sites and personal weblog. This development has made the large media houses like NDTV and their standard form of journalism increasingly nervous about the future of their absolute authority on public psyche and exposed the fragility of their empire.

By putting a gag on Chyetanya Kunte, what example does Ms. Barkha Dutt and NDTV wants to set? Is it in fact a warning for all bloggers to think twice before expressing their personal views? Do all bloggers now start gulping their emotions to avoid legal notices? The Mumbai incidence was definitely a serious matter of public concern. Every Indian has a right to express his/her views on this subject. If fingers can be raised against politicians, bureaucrats, judiciary and security forces, fingers can also be raised against the holy cow journalists and media houses.

Freedom of speech cannot be selective. As Noam Chomsky had said, “If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

Image courtesy: flickr.com

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Barack Obama and the future of our World

Millions world over has gone buoyant over the first black president in the White House – Mr. Barack Hussein Obama. His swearing-in as the forty-fourth American President on January 20, 2009 has skyrocketed enormous expectations and hope to move ahead from an awful economic condition, to necessitate the end of an unwinnable and unpopular war and to get rid of the policies of a vindictive, ignorant and stupid regime. These are customary expectations. By superbly oscillating the politics of high frequency emotion, Barack Obama has won the minds of a sizable section of his country folks and the world’s populace. Armed with a powerful and effective rhetoric of masterfully employed words, Obama’s orations were capable to create “a belief that there are better days ahead” and have instigated his country to “reclaim the American dream” and raise the demand for ‘a change’. Though critics like the journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens has derided this rhetoric as a stockpile of ten cliché keywords “Dream, Fear, Hope, New, People, We, Change, America, Future and Together” (See Slate Magazine, March 03, 2008) it is hard to be impassive about the fervor Obama has generated. But still the vital question remains unanswered: how much can this ‘prophet of hope’ ultimately deliver?

There is no doubt that Barack Obama’s presidency made a significant impact on the collective consciousness of African-American community. It will be a grave mistake to ignore this overt optimism, uncontrollable passion and pride among the black people concerning Obama. Though American society has walked a long way from the dreadful days of racial discrimination, the evils of institutional racism, discrimination in education, housing, employment, policing and criminal justice continue to exist in today’s America. Poverty and social abuse is still a poignant issue. A major section of the deprived African-Americans therefore cannot get rid of their lifelong perception that a black person has to work harder than a white person to reach the same success, that black people are incessantly used and valued in the American society for their muscles, not for their brains. The media still depicts an awesomely negative image of the black men as “…a bunch of hapless layabouts who spend their days ticking off reparations demands and shaking their fist at the white man.” (See Obama and the Myth of the Black Messiah) The ascending of an African-American to warm the highest chair of the country is therefore perceived as a dream come true, a historic event. Obama is being elevated in the minds of African-Americans as a messiah who can convincingly speak about juxtaposing freedom-hope-change and motivates them to shout ‘Yes, We Can!’

Obama’s mixed-ethnic identity (he is the son of a Kansas-born white mother and a Kenyan-born black father) has also played a vital role. Throughout American history, lighter-skinned blacks have been viewed as less intimidating and have generally received better treatment from white society than darker-skinned blacks. This good black-bad black dynamic based on the darkness of skin tone was definitely an advantage for Obama – the advantage of not being ‘black enough’. He has meticulously built up a multicultural image that crosses ethnic boundaries and has spoken about issues concerning all Americans irrespective of race, culture and religion. Hence the implication of his victory goes beyond any racial symbolism. Whether Obama can particularly address key African-American issues therefore remains doubtful. The popular singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte has warned American people to be ‘careful’ about Barack Obama because “We don’t know what he’s truly about.” According to the Calypso King, Obama is “Obviously very bright, speaks very well, cuts a handsome figure. But all of that is just the king’s clothes. Who’s the king?” Obama has appeared with the alluring cloths contrived with profound care by the American enterprise of manipulative media barons, corporate oligarchs, special-interest groups, Wall Street firms and the American political establishment – those who firmly believe in acting as the masters of the world, propels the American hegemony, proudly carries the criminal legacy of Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Bush and continue to support Israel and its atrocious act of brutality. Barack Obama, according to John Pilger, “…will secure, like every president, the best damned democracy money can buy.”

Barack Obama’s devious face was uncovered in March 2008 when the ‘patriotic’ American media maliciously exposed a December 2007 speech of his longtime pastor and spiritual adviser Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The speech titled ‘The day of Jerusalem's fall’ created a huge disconcert to the Obama campaign. In this now infamous speech, Rev. Wright spoke about an extremely repulsive truth. Admitting that 9/11 attacks was a crime of America’s own making, Rev. Wright said that, “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yards! America's chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism.” The media and the musclemen of American establishment immediately sparked off an outcry and insisted Obama to denounce the ‘inflammatory rhetoric’. Obama dutifully obliged them by resigning his membership in the church and said that he was ‘outraged’ and ‘saddened’ by the behavior of his former pastor.

Obama had also left no ambiguity about his stand on the Israel-Palestine issue. In July 2008 he expressed himself to the media by saying that “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.” What did Obama mean by ‘everything’? Slaughtering Palestinian children in retaliation? Clearly enough, the prospective President of United States was approving Israel’s act of ‘self defense’ and never felt a similar concern to utter a word of disapproval about the thousands of Palestinian children killed by the Israeli attacks. Sajy Elmaghinni of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has described the traumatic condition of Palestinian children during the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza that, “Many kids have stopped eating. They are inactive, they barely talk, they cling to their parents all the time.” Palestinian children were ‘unworthy’ victims of Barack Obama’s worthy ‘expectation’!

Figures made available by B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group has shown that from September 2000 until November 2008, Israeli security forces have killed 2,990 Palestinians in Gaza. During this same seven years, Hamas rockets from Gaza have killed a total of 22 Israeli civilians. (See Question and Answer on Gaza by Stephen Shalom) Does Mr. Obama agree with the official US definition that depicts terrorism as a “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets”? If the homemade Quassam rockets fired by Hamas is a felonious act and therefore condemnable then why the official Israeli butchery cannot be condemned by the same yardstick? While the recent 22-days of Israeli genocidal assault on defenseless Palestinian populations of Gaza were going on, Obama ‘strategically’ preferred to remain silent by saying that “there is only one president at a time”. This unquestioning support for the habitually racist and neurotically extremist Israel is a very common posture for all American presidents. In other word, it is almost impossible to occupy the highest chair of the country which houses the headquarters of international Zionism and where the Zionist lobby has a ubiquitous influence on the political system and media.

Whatever the inexorable propaganda of the international media might pound on our heads, Barack Obama’s reflection on the Palestinian crisis is one apparent indication of the type of ‘change’ the world is actually going to witness in the coming days. Let all the optimists be assured that the vicious legacy of America’s ‘divine right’ to control everything and playing God everywhere in the pretext of spreading democracy all over the world will continue. Moreover, to impale the existing and newer preys, new midnight agents might get recruited. The possibility of Iran to become the next possible prey is not distant. Israel will then play the prominent role of a strategic military partner because the weakening of Iran will significantly serve Israel’s regional interests.

Apparently, Obama looks more intelligent and smarter than his predecessor George Bush who has finished his term as a shoe-ducking president. Knowing very well that the international community has long became spineless and insignificant, the bigot Bush tried to win support for a superfluous ‘war on terror’ in selective Islamic countries by exploiting the general anger of the American people over terrorism. Accordingly, Afghanistan was bombed into heaps of rubble, Iraq was surgically destroyed. Responding to the question on why there is hatred for America in some Islamic countries, Bush famously delivered a stupid answer, “I'm amazed that there is such misunderstanding of what our country is about, that people would hate us. I am, I am – like most Americans, I just can't believe it. Because I know how good we are…” Similarly stupid was his charge against the Indian and Chinese middle class for eating out all the available food and creating the world food crisis. Barack Obama is no George Bush. Under his costume he is armed with a much stylish and sophisticated rhetoric. But there are his critics who have gone so far to predict that in the coming days Obama might turn into a master of delusion.

In his Presidential Inaugural Address, Obama lectured American citizens to “Prepare the nation for a new age” and extended his cautioned words to “those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West” that the people will “judge you by what you build, not what you destroy.” It will be interesting to watch how much significant change Mr. Obama can bring to America’s imperialist and violent foreign policy. Initially, Barack Obama will be let free to do rightful things that will justify his choice and assure the world about his positiveness. By signing the executive order to close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within a year and banning coercive interrogation methods are signals of these proposed acts. The avid Obama supporters will argue that this act itself is enough to put to rest all speculations of cynics who “fail to understand … that the ground has shifted beneath them”. Only time can tell whether he has actually inherited the legacy of blatant hypocrisy, immoral double-standards and shameful contradictions of former American presidents or not. The world will eagerly wait to watch how much he builds or destroys in the coming days.

Image courtesy: osi-speaks.blogspot.com, www.time.com

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