tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56634817879797865452024-03-19T18:20:48.707+05:30Words from SolitudeWords from Solitude is a live blog from India that aims to explore, interpret and analyze the critical issues of our time along with their socio-economic, political, cultural, intellectual and ethical consequences.shubhohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10661646608744489943noreply@blogger.comBlogger8616tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663481787979786545.post-77229699253161688692011-07-12T01:44:00.011+05:302014-10-22T03:02:08.183+05:30Fall of the Left and Buddhadeb<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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During a press briefing in May 2006, CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose made a prophetic comment. While speaking on the role of media which was then projecting chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as the poster boy of reforms, Bose remarked bluntly: “The media has taken the Brand Buddha line. But it can spell trouble for him.” (<i><a href="http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=68332">Source</a></i>) The outspoken CPI(M) state secretary was expressing his worry that the same media which is making a superhero out of him, was equally capable of abruptly changing color, chameleon-like, and start smearing the chief minister’s image. Biman Bose’s comment came at a time when the political influence and reputation of Buddhadeb was at its peak. He had just won the 2006 state assembly elections with a colossal majority and was hailed as a new-age leader, a “capitalist communist” who was expected to steer Bengal to glory. The industrial lobby, the neo-liberal media and large sections of the urban middle class was praising him animatedly for his single-point industrialization agenda. He was been credited for bringing back hope to a state marred by “despair”. Neo-liberalism advocate <i>The Economist</i> went gaga to extol him for his “reputation for probity,” for being “modest and engaging” on topics from agri-business to consumerism and Indian poetry. From Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Azim Premji of Wipro, many big-shots were lauding him as India’s best chief minister. Unfortunately for him, it took just a year after the famous victory for the Brand Buddha bubble to burst. Within a couple of years the monolithic edifice of the CPI(M) came tumbling down when the people of Bengal delivered a real kick in the teeth to sweep out the Left Front from thirty-four long years of uninterrupted power.<br />
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Buddhadeb’s rise within the party was straight and trouble-free. Active in politics from his Presidency College days, he joined the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI) as a primary member in 1966. Always a disciplined partyman, he was spotted early by the party state secretary Pramod Dasgupta as a future leader and was soon elected as state secretary of the Democratic Youth Federation (DYF) – the party’s youth wing. The party groomed young Buddhadeb and subsequently co-opted him for parliamentary politics. He became the information and culture minister of the first Left Front government in 1977. Except between 1982-87 when he lost the assembly polls and in 1993 when he resigned from the Cabinet after being scolded by his leader Jyoti Basu for being rude with a bureaucrat, Buddhadeb continued as a minister for a large part of the Left’s rule. In 2000, he emerged from the shadows of his predecessor, who retired for health reasons and took the charge of Bengal as chief minister.</div>
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In the eyes of the middle class party circles of the powerful Kolkata District Committee, Buddhadeb was always special for his intellectual sophistication which he had earned by his access to high culture. His opinions regarding art and culture, especially on what existed outside the Left cultural cliché was considered to be the last word for the top CPI(M) leadership in Bengal. Though he was in some way the party’s real commissar of culture, surprisingly enough, he was never found to be directly dictating terms to the Cultural Front of his party; possibly considering it much lower to his taste and dignity. Cultural front leaders were known to be critical in private about Buddhadeb’s snobbish views that had distinguished him from his comrades. They were particularly uneasy about his reproachful attitude towards the agit-prop programs undertaken by them. Buddhadeb, for them, was too much of an egoist, someone who felt immense pleasure about his elitism. However, as workers of a regimented party, they would obey and acclaim him in public as a leader of high cultural and moral ideals and values.</div>
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The media manufactured “cultured” image of Buddhadeb, his honesty and austere dwelling had initially enthralled the middle class Bengalis. Is he not a politician quite unique among the stereotype Indian counterparts – they used to argue. But this artificial image did not last for long or brought him any help when he needed it most. Steps taken by the Marxist turned reformist chief minister was ringing like alarm bells in the ears of the Leftist old guards. He had never worked closely among the peasant and workers, did not come to the party through peasant and labor movements and therefore never really understood them. From an urban middle class understanding and outlook he arrogantly went on rubbishing the concerns and cautions sounded from the grassroots.</div>
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Stuck with the appearance, he tried to authorize the media created “capitalist communist” image expressing his dislike for <i>bandhs</i> (general strike) – a customary form of protest used by the Leftists. “Unfortunately, I belong to a political party that calls for bandhs. I have kept quiet. But, from now on, I’ll not keep quiet,” he had bravely said to a gathering of industrialists. It was indeed shocking to see him getting carried away by the sly media strategy that had credited him entirely for the Left Front’s huge electoral victory. Who knew better than Buddhadeb that the achievement, though steered by him, would have remained unfeasible without the assiduous work done at the local level by numerous dedicated party functionaries. Sadly enough, instead of brushing aside this phony hero worship, Buddhadeb started to believe in the brand himself.</div>
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His basic ideas on development were apparently faultless. There was nothing wrong to focus on industrialization as the key to economic growth. After the massive election victory, it was also not in the wrong to launch a rapid industrialization drive. The newly elected government under Buddhadeb’s stewardship envisioned that if they have not gone on that particular path by taking advantage of the current neo-liberal economic milieu of the country, it would have been like betraying the people who had voted them back to power.</div>
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We must not forget that it was during the Left regime when Bengal had achieved a considerable success in agricultural production. The land redistribution program that had empowered sharecroppers throughout Bengal along with the three-tier Panchayat System that had decentralized power at the grass root level through the democratic institutions of local self-governments has remained the Left’s prime area of success which in return has ensured their uninterrupted stint in power. It is incredible to think that Buddhadeb and the CPI(M) did not take this background into consideration while launching the massive industrial program.</div>
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The sequence of events unfolded over time clearly shows that the aggressive industrialization drive had proceeded with too much of unnecessary haste which could have been done with more time, patience and care. Instead of involving the stakeholders in the process, the government preferred to keep them in dark. Due to some strange reason, Buddhadeb and his team used a pliant administration to apply force on the people to give their dear land. Many of them were poor peasants, those who had formed the backbone of his party. Critical policy decisions concerning people’s life and livelihood were taken at the top, coldly dictated and mindlessly implemented without thinking deeply that if the outcome of their decisions went against them what would be the alternative policy to check it. Buddhadeb also ignored the fact that he is not a mass leader with a stature of Jyoti Basu but a leader appointed by the party and substantiated by the corporate media. Quite surprisingly he could not even recognize that those who are making a hero out of him are actually not his friends.</div>
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Another graver mistake was to take the tenacious Mamata Banerjee too lightly. In the initial days after the 2006 landslide win Buddhadeb became a ridiculously haughty man. He forgot that in a democracy one cannot underestimate the opponents – even if they apparently look toothless and stale. Under a favorable environment, the puny opposition will grow leafy in no time. And when it starts happening, the sprouting cannot be resisted by simply calling the phenomenon a nuisance. However, we cannot blame Buddhadeb alone for this blunder. His party, the CPI(M) is equally responsible for it. What was the CPI(M) leadership doing when the opposition was gaining strength after strength from Buddhadeb and his government’s reckless experiments? Nothing much, because the 2006 landslide wins had silenced them all. The leadership had no other option but to allow the too expensive experiments to continue on a grand scale even after Mamata Banerjee started targeting their core constituency and successfully incited the people against them. </div>
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The success of the Left Front government’s industrial policy depended primarily on an extremely sensitive factor – land acquisition. To ensure its success, the primary task of the government was to insightfully pay attention to the expectations of the people who were deeply attached with their land. The events of Singur has clearly pointed out that the major failure of the government was its inability to gain trust from the poor and marginal farmers, whose livelihood depended directly on the land the government had decided to acquire. Instead of going to the villages and discussing the matter of setting up industry with the people, the government relied more on highhanded bureaucratic methods. Buddhadeb, who had once proudly claimed not to operate out of the state secretariat Writers' Buildings, disregarded even the mass front organizations of his own party and their close to the earth leaders. Their wisdom and apprehensions were just brushed aside. In due course, the government, the Left Front and a regimented party like the CPI(M) lost touch with a good section of their own people. The situation came as a godsend to the opposition who merrily started to exploit the doubts, anxieties and grievances brimming in the minds of the effected people.</div>
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A large number of the effected peasants couldn’t make out the value of industrialization, how it would bring prosperity to their lives and will ensure a better future for their children. Brand Buddha miserably failed to explain them the differences between land acquisition and land grab. True, Buddhadeb and his team had tried to communicate their vision, to make the masses aware about the benefits of their policy. But their tone of discourse was mechanical and callous, entirely inappropriate for a compassionate pro-poor government.</div>
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During the 2006 Assembly elections, Left Front had raised the slogan: Agriculture is our base, Industry is our future. We still think that the slogan was correct. But the deeds failed to match the lofty words. Oversimplifying the electoral results as an automatic mandate for industrialization, Buddhadeb and his team misjudged the objective ground realities of Bengal. The mistakes committed in Singur got amplified a hundred times or more during and after the events of Nandigram. To consider Nandigram as the logical continuation of Singur will be wrong – it was much more complex, and certainly devious in nature. However, after the fatal police shooting that had killed fourteen individuals, the concealed anger against the chief minister, his government and party busted out in open.</div>
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Nandigram had also exposed Buddhadeb’s terrible weakness as an administrator, his lack of leadership skill. After the Nandigram fiasco Buddhadeb’s administration lost all their strength and courage to counter the unyielding opposition led by a reincarnated Trinamool chieftain. For the first time in their long tenure the CPI(M) had to face a tough united opposition which also included prominent representatives of the Bengali intelligentsia and the civil society. Nandigram events have taught the Leftists a severe lesson – never take the people for granted. The events have also pulled them by their ears and taught them that losing touch with the people is synonymous to death for a Communist Party.</div>
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A section of opportunist intellectuals who used to pry around Buddhadeb just a few days ago and flattered him in public to prove their proximity, suddenly turned hostile. With the choicest phrases possible they started to curse him and the CPI(M). A bewildered Buddhadeb watched in utter dismay how some of his “close” intellectual pals, for whose behalf he had once disregarded many of his party comrades, have manifestly went against him. Yet it was those debarred party comrades, who have always failed to occupy a place in his larger imagination, solidly stood by his side. But whether Buddhadeb felt any comfort among them is a difficult question to answer.</div>
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The consistent erosion of the Left’s support base in the rural areas that had started since the 2008 panchayat elections reached its high point when Mamata Banerjee successfully chased away the Tatas from Singur. A helpless chief minister and his government just watched like a sitting duck how skillfully the rainbow opposition force took complete control of the situation. Titmice were seen kicking the elephant that had been stuck in mud. Men and women from different walks of life – from the ultra Left-ultra Right-Centrists, the poets-writers-artists-critics-dramatists-actors-singers-filmmakers, the historians-sociologists-anthropologists, the spiritualists-anarchists-existentialists-rationalists-socialists-social democrats, the Gandhians-Ambedkarites-Arya Samajis, the traders-middlemen-brokers-peddlers-touts-pimps, the rights activists-environmental activists-fact finders, the renegades-utopian dreamers-opportunists, the conspirators-manipulators-undercover and double agents, the time servers-self seekers-turncoats, everyone from everywhere jumped on the Mamata bandwagon to protest against Buddhadeb’s industrial policy. Taking advantage of the situation, the Maoists in the Jangalmahal area and the ethnic Gurkhas in Darjeeling raised their head to add more trouble for an already dejected administration.</div>
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The mainstream media which had conspicuously stood behind him and rained praises just a couple of years ago, penned editorials advising him not to “follow or react to policy parameters set down by New Delhi” and started putting on pressure to “act as the pace-setter in opening up new areas to foreign direct investment,” abruptly changed their course. And what a change it was! By that time, Buddhadeb’s brand value has hit a rock bottom. The Left’s legendary mass base has also started eroding from its core. Tasting blood, a cohesive, belligerent, and blatant campaign was initiated against the Left Front, particularly targeting the CPI(M). The unprecedented campaign eventually turned into a total bias in favor of the Trinamool chieftain. At every defeat of the Left Front in consecutive elections, the media gloated more and more with ruthless joy. Such was the beauty of the systemic propaganda that people have almost forgot that the Jangalmahal crisis started after the Maoists have tried to assassinate the chief minister and another central minister near Lalgarh.</div>
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After the 2009 general election results, Buddhadeb finally started to see the writings on the wall and made a last afford to recover his lost ground. The chief minister, who during the crisis moments of Singur and Nandigram had not once visited those areas, came out from the dark chambers of Writers' Buildings, from the company of his charmed circle of bureaucrats, and started traveling all over the state. As a desperate attempt, he visited the districts every weekend to communicate with the people. But it was all too late. He found that large sections of the masses have not only turned their faces away from him, but also from his party. Therefore when his government undertook several pro-people policies just before the 2011 assembly elections, it failed to make any impact. As an alternative, the people have started trusting the wily Mamata Banerjee and her treacherous gang. Why should they continue to keep faith on a regime that has turned so insensitive? Even those who had strong reservations about Mamata Banerjee’s style of politics ended up supporting her.</div>
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The 2011 assembly election debacle of the Left in Bengal is undoubtedly historic. It is not only an electoral setback but a political defeat as well. But is it the end of the road for the CPI(M)? Can we now objectively start terming it as “the death of the Left” and presume that the Left has become politically irrelevant in the country? Off course not. History will again create situations when the Left and the CPI(M) will rise like a phoenix from the ashes. The present rulers of the country are ensuring that the moment is not too far. Within a brief time, the poor and socially oppressed sections in Bengal will eventually realize that the Trinamool Congress is not their political party, the new “liberator of Bengal” Mamata Banerjee is not the leader on whom they can keep faith for a long time – even if she continues to carry on nourishing them with her populist Ma-Mati-Manush philosophy, presenting herself under the garb of the “real” Left.</div>
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Can the CPI(M) bounce back under Buddhadeb’s leadership? In the backdrop of the debacle, his strange attitude is making us skeptical. When leaders and workers of his party are brutally attacked and killed on a daily basis across the state by the Trinamool-Congress goons, when party legislators are physically assaulted, when party and union offices are ransacked, when party supporters are being evicted from their homes by force and extortion is going on a large scale, Buddhadeb is far away from the scene. He is never found walking beside the dedicated Left workers who are trying to consolidate and revive. Instead he is behaving like a crestfallen lad, abandoned by his parents. Once again Buddhadeb has found it safe to retreat into his private cocoon, completely disregarding countless ordinary Left workers – those who have believed and accepted him as their leader.</div>
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Since the May 2009 Lok Sabha elections where the CPI(M) suffered a major embarrassing setback, he has continuously skipped eight Politburo and several Central Committee meetings. What message does he want to convey by running away from the party’s highest policy making body? Is he signaling to do something similar to what he did in 1993 by tendering his resignation from the fourth Left Front government? Time and again he has proved his failure to grow-up from just a leader to a leader of the masses. We are therefore doubtful about seeing him rolling up his sleeves and fighting back again in near future. </div>
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Not even the greatest of his critics can criticize Buddhadeb’s personal integrity. No one can even think of charging him as corrupt. Inside the party circles not a single detractor can question his dedication to the party cause. His cultural sophistication is way beyond any shadow of a doubt. He is an ardent reader, a playwright and a first rate translator. He is certainly a person with a modern progressive mind who dreams for a better world. At the same time, he bears a typical Bengali urban middle-class psyche, mirroring the confusions of liberalism and orthodoxy. His inability to reach and understand the people he leaded and his failure in managing political contradictions has tragically trapped him in an endless battle within itself.</div>
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Time has come to tell in plain words that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is not the leader who can steer the Left Front and the CPI(M) in these difficult days. </div>
shubhohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10661646608744489943noreply@blogger.com0Vadodara, Gujarat, India22.3073095 73.1810975999999322.217758 73.094521599999936 22.396860999999998 73.267673599999924tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663481787979786545.post-64254910146010623042011-07-03T16:36:00.008+05:302011-07-14T22:56:24.004+05:30Chaos to Creation: the enigma of Bob Dylan (Part: Three)<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7_USdBpSOLOGaH3Sx5Qv60QR7buFuJsaySRmgohHQy0ZGQhnQ10Hs2YiHdwJQ3829u1GPS7TXzNY3VUjzV9i8WVJZTIv8KL21ZAeWaQ1p2vyBc1KaB8zn4o7aovXr4sxRrghV0m12EoY/s1600/Dylan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7_USdBpSOLOGaH3Sx5Qv60QR7buFuJsaySRmgohHQy0ZGQhnQ10Hs2YiHdwJQ3829u1GPS7TXzNY3VUjzV9i8WVJZTIv8KL21ZAeWaQ1p2vyBc1KaB8zn4o7aovXr4sxRrghV0m12EoY/s320/Dylan.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>In 1968, Dylan came out from his eighteen-month long self-imposed exile, once more picked up his acoustic guitar and recorded <i>John Wesley Harding</i>, a soft, somber acoustic album very different from the surrealistic verbosity and flashy musical arrangements of <i>Blonde and Blonde</i>. Unlike the apparently impromptu manner in which he wrote the lyrics of his previous album, every song of the new album was written with more care and completed before he went for recording. The world he described in the songs, as Mike Marqusee has drawn our attention to, is loaded with connotative characters: the immigrants, drifters, outlaws, hobos, greedy landlords, hateful figures of unentitled authority, saints, martyrs, the rich and the poor. Though sounded simple and rustic, the narrative songs are in fact ingrained deep into elemental social themes, revealing several intertwined layers of subtle political message which went almost undetected to the listeners. During the sparkling 1968 <i>Sing Out!</i> interview, John Cohen asked him why his songs aren’t as socially or politically applicable as they were earlier. Absolutely conscious and confident about his intention, Dylan gave a categorical reply to the question and said: “Probably that is because no one cares to see it the way I’m seeing it now, whereas before, I saw it the way they saw it.”<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In one of the songs of this album <i>All Along The Watchtower</i>, Dylan was at his enigmatic best. The haunting twelve lines song unfolds “the cycle of events,” as Dylan puts it, “in a rather reverse order” but masterly evokes the frightening air of a desolated wasteland. It also conveys an apocalyptic warning through the brilliant juxtaposition of biblical imageries – the two approaching horsemen signaling the destruction of Babylon, the growling wild cat and the howling wind as the portents of doom. Although Dylan was increasingly unwilling to express his opinion or take a stand on the war of Vietnam that took two million lives, <i>All Along The Watchtower</i> infuses within the listener a daunting feeling of an impending catastrophe, obliquely referring to the extensive calamities happening in Vietnam. Commenting on the starkness and simplicity of the album and its black & white cover photograph, critic Andy Gill wrote in his book <i>My Back Pages: Classic Bob Dylan 1962–69</i> that, “a rural breeze whispered through its lonely margins”. In the photograph Dylan posed significantly with Bengali baul minstrels Purna Das and Lakshman Das – his only Indian connection we know so far. The baul brothers were on a six month America tour sponsored by Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman and his wife Sally, staying with them as their house guests. <br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In June 1970, the messiah of counterculture was finally co-opted by the academic establishment. The Princeton University honored Dylan, a college dropout who has just turned 30, with a Doctorate of Music – the first such honor given to a popular musician. Though he had credible reasons to accept the degree which “spelled respectability from every look and touch and scent of it,” his wife Sara and friend David Crosby had to take lots of effort to convince a hesitant Dylan to attend the ceremony. The main reason for him to accept the honor was to undermine the burden of his counter cultural credibility which was taking too much out of his life. Extremely uncomfortable in the ceremonial cap and gown which he initially refused to wear, Dylan climbed the ceremony dais on a hot day with the droning din of cicadas in the background and was introduced as “…one of the most creative popular musicians of the last decade.” Much to his dismay, the commencement speaker then went on describing him with the same words he deeply loathed, “…though he is approaching the perilous age of thirty, he remains the authentic expression of the disturbed and concerned conscience of Young America.” Over thirty years later Dylan wrote in <i>Chronicles</i> that the introduction came “like a jolt” to him and he felt like getting “tricked once more”. In <i>Day of the Locust</i>, a song he wrote shortly about the occasion, Dylan described that the venue “smelled like a tomb” and he was “glad to get out of there alive”.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Serious studies, densely written books and scholarly articles on Dylan began to appear in the late 60’s. However, the greater part of the works has emerged from outside of the boundaries of academic circles. A particular amateur school of scholarship emerged in the form of “Dylanology” – a term coined by a madcap Dylan fanatic A. J. Weberman. Weberman was also the self-proclaimed father of “garbology,” the study of human personality through the analysis of garbage. Unsuccessful to detect “what went down behind the door that Dylan had slammed in my face,” while he was “trying to crack the code of his symbolism,” Weberman shifted his center of attention on Dylan’s garbage can. The first valuable discovery in his quest for truth was “a half-finished letter written by Bob Dylan to Johnny Cash.” To unlock more secrets of Dylan’s life, he then went on digging out other “valuable” materials from the trash can – disposable diapers, supermarket receipts, fragments of fan letters, ripped rock-and-roll magazines including an issue of <i>Crawdaddy!</i> containing Weberman’s recently written article, vet bills relating to treatment of Dylan’s dog Sasha’s upset stomach, discarded Polaroid negatives and a card from Dylan's mother wishing a happy birthday to one of his kids. <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Weberman also led a group of pot smoking Yippies and started the "Dylan Liberation Front". The aim of the front was to remind Dylan about his “refusal at that time to perform at political benefit concerts, the lack of social commitment in his song lyrics and the fact that he owned stock in companies that produced weapons used in Vietnam.” Clearly troubled by the full-scale anarchy launched by the notorious group, Dylan finally lost his patience. “A.J., you go through garbage like a pig, man?” he furiously told Weberman and threatened him to “kick his ass personally” if he did it again. But Weberman could not resist the temptation to carry on his bizarre scientific research and continued to sneak around in the alleys behind Dylan’s house. What happened next is depicted in Weberman’s book <i>My Life in Garbology</i>. In an absolutely hilarious account he recalls being encountered by Dylan on Elizabeth Street in the Bowery neighborhood of Manhattan:<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>That afternoon I was walking down Elizabeth Street with my head bowed down to my shoes trying to figure out where I was really at, when I heard a bicycle stop a few feet in back of me. I thought nothing of it. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, an arm clasped around my neck. I wrenched it loose, turned around and saw it was Bob Dylan, my former idol, the man who'd written all the symbolist poetry I meticulously studied. My thoughts were interrupted by a punch in the head. Could this actually be happening or was it a bad dream? Perhaps it was a combination of both. I didn't fight back. Instead I tried to calm Dylan down and block his punches. But he was having too much fun to stop. He threw me down on the ground and he began to knock my head against the pavement. Finally some local freaks pulled Dylan off. </i><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thinking that Weberman had been robbed, a local who witnessed the entire episode asked him, “Did he get much money?” Weberman replied feverishly, “Man, that’s was BOB DYLAN, he doesn’t have to roll hippies on the Bowery!” He took the physical assault as an honor and later proudly told <i>Rolling Stone</i>, “Not too many have that opportunity to have Bob Dylan on top of them.” <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, the later day Dylanologists does not seem to be as crackbrained as Weberman and his gang. Many of them turned out to be serious researchers, closely studying Dylan’s life and works, discovering and collecting rarely known facts, analyzing his lyrics and organizing and publishing recording session data. Ian Macdonald wrote in <i>Uncut</i>: “Over the years Dylanologists have hypothesized about their subject at greater length, in more detail, and often in keener intelligence than anything accorded to comparably prolific figures in rock. Dylanology is a Class A obsession: no other life in the music business attracts, or so cryptically rewards, such breathless attention.” <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Am I here all alone?</b><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The notion of alienation has remained a major theme for Dylan, but was represented in his works in a multifaceted and rather complex way. The concept of alienation is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition of thought which says that man has alienated himself from “the ways of God”, leading to the “Fall of Man”. Modern secular ideologies and social-political theories of the western world, including liberalism and socialism, trace their lineage back to this Judeo-Christian teaching. However, in the modern social theories from Rousseau to Marx, the concept has been construed as the estrangement of human beings from the physical world and their own human nature. Modern capitalism has also formulated a particular kind of social relation between the human productive forces and the owners of the labour process. By reducing everything including the labour power of individuals into commodities, capitalist relations of production have imposed the most extreme form of alienation and have given rise to a profound sense of emptiness, anxiety, powerlessness and insecurity among individuals.<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is always an unremitting bleakness in Dylan’s inspection and assessment of the modern world though he has also reflected the prospect of transforming it into a better one. His view on alienation is nowhere better expressed than in <i>It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)</i>. Drawing on one of the classic themes of alienation, commoditization of human society, Dylan inspects in this song how human beings become alienated under the steamroller of consumer capitalism. Professor Andrew Gamble of the University of Sheffield has observed some distinct recurring patterns in the songs where Dylan has treated emptiness and defenselessness as a major symptom of political and social alienation. “Dylan has written and performed many different kinds of song,” he argues, “one of the most important of which is the distinction between what might be called songs of redemption and songs of survival. Songs of redemption reflect a committed gaze and their primary motif is change, the possibility of transforming the world and human beings, while songs of survival reflect a skeptical gaze, a much bleaker assessment of the world, and their primary motif is escape.”<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>But I know God is my shield</b><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the early compositions Dylan has frequently drawn language and imagery from the Bible, though his basic intention at that stage was to adopt elements from a wide range of sources to enrich his own works. The biblical parables and motifs were harmoniously blended with both personal and social experiences to rationalize his anger and criticism against the religious peculiarities and values of Christian America. To indict the existing political order, Dylan was intelligent enough to use orthodox religious motifs and literary allusions from the Bible instead of directly sourcing inspiration from standard radical texts. Religion “does give me, on the surface, some images,” Dylan had clarified in a 1974 interview, “but I don’t know to what degree.” However, it will be wrong to assume that all of Dylan’s writings were always purposely constructed to express his worldview. Like any other creative work of art, many of Dylan’s songs were indistinct which could awfully mislead his audiences who seek for a profound meaning from them. <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">There are plenty of instances where the early Dylan had been found making intense remarks concerning religion. “I have no religion. Tried a bunch of different religions. Churches are divided. Can’t make up their minds neither can I,” he told Izzy Young in 1961. Instead, as Robert Shelton had observed, Dylan seems to have made his own religion preaching “a sermon of anger, protest, nihilism, hope, anti-convention.” In 1965, he told Ray Coleman, “I don’t think religion can show anybody how to live.” In the same year he told Mary Merrifield that he finds certain features of organised religion as deceitful: “The phoniness of telling somebody they’re different for you because they’re a different religion. That’s not right.” The early Dylan was particularly skeptical regarding organized religion. In the anti-war song <i>With God on Our Side</i>, he critically spoke about an evil nexus between the Church and the State, revealing how religion is used by the American State to rationalize its policies. In the specific socio-political context in which the songs have appeared, this courageous attitude towards religion and faith was certainly progressive and secular. <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Typically reticent about his personal past, for a long time he had avoided speaking on his Jewish upbringing in public. “I’ve never felt Jewish. I don’t really consider myself Jewish or non-Jewish. I don’t have much of a Jewish background,” Dylan told Ron Rosenbaum in March 1966. “I’m not a patriot to any creed. I believe in all of them and none of them…” In the same <i>Playboy</i> interview he had also explained why he does not need to think much about God: “He’s got enough people asking Him for favors. He’s got enough people asking Him to pull strings. I’ll pull my own strings…” <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">During the mid and late-1960s, Dylan continued to examine the dialects of faith. References to biblical characters frequented his lyrics. “His biblical characters, like mythical stand-ins for the singer’s own alienation, are also outliers,” observed R. Clifton Spargo and Anne K. Ream in their excellent analysis on Dylan and religion. “Many of the metaphors have been secularized,” the authors pointed out, “as Dylan infuses erotic love with the passion of Christ, but the energy of such songs is borrowed from the motion and fluidity of gospel, which had poured for years from America’s faith-haunted hills and its valleys of suffering.” <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord</b><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dylan’s secular convictions took an unexpected twist in the late 1970s, when he embraced evangelical Christianity and released his first album of gospel music <i>Slow Train Coming</i>. At that point he was clearly not in the best of mental health following his painful divorce and the terrible failure of <i>Renaldo and Clara</i>, a four-hour long film he had written, produced and directed. To recover the $1.25 million he lost on the film, Dylan took on a world tour and performed in one hundred and fourteen shows covering Japan, far East, Europe, Australia and United States. The tiring tour, enduring domestic pressures from his broken marriage and too much alcohol and drugs began to take toll on his life. In an attempt to overcome the gloom and isolation he was feeling inside, he seems to have found a savior in Jesus Christ. <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The opening song <i>Gotta Serve Somebody</i> won him a Grammy and Dylan went on preaching evangelical messages from the Book of Revelation in two more Gospel albums <i>Saved</i> and <i>Shot of Love</i>. Carrying his new-found belief to the point of rectitude, Dylan, now fascinated by Jesus Christ and his Jewish linkage, suggested that social and political ills are nothing but symptoms of a deeper spiritual crisis. This is in complete contrast to what he had expressed just a few years earlier in <i>It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)</i> where he made a blistering criticism of religion in the era of capitalism. “It’s easy to see without looking too far / That not much is really sacred,” he wrote bitterly to affirm how religion has been reduced to just another commodity that produces “plastic Christs” and delivers “fake moral” directives. <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dylan’s peregrination into Christianity remains one of the most provocative and controversial periods of his musical career. Though he had long stopped saying what some of his admirers and followers wanted him to say, the radical departure into exclusively religious songs came to them as a shock – a final betrayal of trust. Annoyed by his outspoken religiosity, critics phrased him “a born-again Christian”. Expressing grief over Dylan’s dalliance with religious fundamentalism, Mike Marqusee wrote acidly, “The prophet of freedom had surrendered to dogma and dour fatalism.” <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Clifton Spargo and Anne Ream have noted that “But even without the rebirth of 1979, Jewish and Christian idioms persist in his work to such a degree that Dylan would have to be reckoned one of the most powerful interpreters of religious language and sensibility in all of American pop culture.” Citing Robert Shelton the authors have also argued that <i>Slow Train Coming</i> has been undervalued largely because of the controversy following Dylan’s decision to become a “Jesus follower” despite the fact that the songs “moves effortlessly between the personal and the political, as Dylan comments on the state of the nation while weighing in on the erroneous ways of modern Americans.” <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The songs from his gospel years were directly connected with Christian ritual. As fellow musicians have later recalled that he had even turned his concerts into Christian services by making his entire band and crew spend time in prayer before each show. His “Jesus music” was loudly abused and booed by the audiences. When some of them heatedly walked out of the show, a visibly shaken Dylan tried to channel his new-found faith to them: “I told you the times they are a-changin’ and they did. I said the answer was blowin’ in the wind and it was. I’m telling you now Jesus is coming back, and He is! And there is no other way of salvation.” While the lyrics of <i>Slow Train Coming</i> draw heavily on biblical texts to stimulate Dylan’s poetic vision, in the next album <i>Saved</i> he made a concerted effort to refer the Bible as the quintessence of faith. Biblical themes are still present in <i>Shot of Love</i>, the third and final album of his Christian period. The songs of this album, however, also offered secular material and is more personal and spontaneous in nature than the previous two.<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Democracy don't rule the world </b><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXvA8uZyvSHJ_isAy3DQMSgwH_PlCUh0vof0MSLkQQ5vDsDzMYC5SoARyLVY82XpaPvlp_avzJdYpptPXgjUGKqSxj9-SfSYCWXaNfZyfByldZJvIdGyKGcoYj7yk6phi_SEx1BtP9Qjk/s1600/rollingstone.com6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXvA8uZyvSHJ_isAy3DQMSgwH_PlCUh0vof0MSLkQQ5vDsDzMYC5SoARyLVY82XpaPvlp_avzJdYpptPXgjUGKqSxj9-SfSYCWXaNfZyfByldZJvIdGyKGcoYj7yk6phi_SEx1BtP9Qjk/s320/rollingstone.com6.jpg" width="263" /></a></div>Fortunately for his admirers, his flirtations with religion ended abruptly. Discharging his disillusionment about religion, Dylan told Martin Killer in provocative words: “Religion is a dirty word. It doesn’t mean anything. Coca Cola is a religion. Oil and steel are a religion. In the name of religion people have been raped, killed and defiled. Today’s religion is tomorrow’s bondage.” After a temporary sojourn, he returned to secular subjects in his 1983 release <i>Infidels</i>, focusing on some of the thorny geopolitical themes of a cacophonous and vacuous postmodern world. While the songs of this album definitely lacks the enduring significance of his earlier topical classics or an identifiable political focus, <i>Infidels</i> brings an angry, inquiring Dylan back to his audience who intensely desired to get their “real” Dylan back. “I don’t know if that (subject) appeals to people or not,” Dylan tells Robert Hilburn of <i>Los Angeles Times</i>, “but I felt I had to do these songs now.” <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>The kaleidoscopic opening track <i>Jokerman</i> stands out for its sublime lyrics. “Freedom just around the corner for you / But with the truth so far off, what good will it do?” In <i>License To Kill</i>, mankind is accused for their imperialistic greed, particularly for their self-destructive obsession for power and predilection for violence. The prophetic and explicitly anti-capitalist <i>Union Sundown</i> gives a superb depiction of ravenous American capitalism:<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>You know, capitalism is above the law</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>It say, "It don't count less it sells."</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>When it costs too much to build it at home</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>You just build it cheaper someplace else</i><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Next comes a harsh repugnance against globalization: <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Democracy don't rule the world</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>You'd better get that in your head</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>This world is ruled by violence</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>But I guess that's better left unsaid</i><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In an interview with David Gates in <i>Newsweek</i>, Dylan explains his restlessness, “I think one thing today and I think another thing tomorrow. I change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time. It doesn't even matter to me.” He continues further, “I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else. […] I don’t adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I've learned more from the songs than I’ve learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.” <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to literary critic and scholar Christopher Ricks, <i>Time Out of Mind</i> was “like Lazarus risen from the dead.” The songs, as one critic has observed, is “full of regret, lamentation, sadness, and the inevitable approach of death.” The bleak songs, Dylan told in a 1997 interview, are “more concerned with the dread realities of life than the bright and rosy idealism popular today.” <i>Time Out of Mind</i> is arguably one of his best albums after the 1975 release <i>Blood On The Tracks</i>. While, according to his own admission, songs don’t come to him easily anymore, he remains to be a prolific songwriter who can fluently express himself in the superb single <i>Things Have Changed</i> which he wrote in 2001 for the film <i>Wonder Boys</i>. Commenting on the lyrics Joel Selvin writes: “It’s classic Dylan – acerbic, cryptic, truthful. The snarl of his youth has given way to a distracted ennui. He is a man disconnected from his own emotions, watching his own life pass by, but still feeling hunger and wondering what happened.” <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>No one in front of me and nothing behind</b><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">On May 2011, Bob Dylan has turned seventy. In April 1997, Allen Ginsberg died of a heart attack at the age of 70 in New York City. The same night at a show in Canada, Dylan dedicated <i>Desolation Row</i> to Ginsberg. Many of his close friends, associates and rivals like Albert Grossman, Phil Ochs, Mike Bloomfield, George Harrison, Dave Van Ronk, Johnny Cash and Jerry Garcia with whom he had walked his spectacular journey have also died. On February 2011, Suze Rotolo died of lung cancer in her Manhattan home at the age of 67. Just before the release of his 1997 album <i>Time Out of Mind</i>, Dylan himself became seriously ill from a heart infection. “I really thought I’d be seeing Elvis soon,” he quipped characteristically after recovering from his illness.<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dylan has long left behind his supernova years. The particular era he represented has also receded from the public mind and is recalled and idealized now by nostalgia. The range and dexterity of his young voice has dissipated and became scratchy due to age. Though he remained controversial all his life, his contradictions, antics and incongruities could not cause any harm to his world-wide reputation as one of the most influential artists of the past century. On the contrary, unlike many popular artists who have faded with time, Dylan has retained his audience and determination and has achieved a mythical status in the world of popular music. His five decades long riveting musical journey is still in motion. He can still evoke a deep emotional response from his audiences. <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Being fully aware that, “People are fickle. Their loyalty can turn at the drop of a hat,” he has certainly mastered the essential skills he needed to survive as a popular artist and deal with fame. He has survived the changing music tastes by continuously reinvented himself and has found a new generation of avid listeners. Hundreds of books have been written about him, thousands of articles about his life and works are mushrooming almost daily. The ever-expanding internet sites are flooded with every bit and piece of Dylan information. Academic courses and conferences are arranged regularly by reputed institutions where eminent scholars, fascinated by his abiding contribution to popular culture, keep themselves busy dissecting his vast repertoire of impressively diverse, elusive yet powerful lyrics. However, he still remains deeply disturbed and frustrated for being misunderstood by critics. He laments about the lack of good critics who can understand the dynamic fundamentalism of popular music.<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, Dylan is far less concerned with nostalgia. Instead, he is notorious for upsetting his admirers by twisting the iconic songs, bewildering them by transforming their lyrics and melodies into strange new creations during the live shows. When in 2004 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, Dylan was seen sitting motionless on stage, yawning and “showed no reaction as a university choir performed a version of his early classic <i>Blowin’ in the Wind</i>.” He continues to remain obscure in public saying little about his music and absolutely nothing about his personal life.<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Changing pace and location,” Douglas Brinkley remarked in the <i>Rolling Stone</i> article <i>Bob Dylan’s America</i>, “are essential to his survival as an artist.” Touring nonstop since 1988, Dylan has tirelessly played over a hundred shows a year and has performed at more than two thousand concerts all around the globe on a Never Ending Tour. <br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In <i>Things Have Changed</i> he fascinatingly wrote:<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>People are crazy and times are strange</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>I used to care, but things have changed </i><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dylan continues to fight back against anything that devalues the spirit of the individual and is critical about the postmodern generation. “It’s a shame to see them so tuned out to real life,” he has bitterly remarked to Douglas Brinkley in 2009. A worried man with a worried mind, he finds that the generation does not understand the cost of liberty. Throughout his life, individual liberty was what mattered to him most. (<i>Concluded</i>)<br />
<br />
(Go to <a href="http://wordsfromsolitude.blogspot.com/2011/01/enigma-of-bob-dylan-part-i.html">Part One</a> / <a href="http://wordsfromsolitude.blogspot.com/2011/01/enigma-of-bob-dylan-part-ii.html">Part Two</a>)<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><b>References:</b></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">1. Bob Dylan: <i>Lyrics (1962-2001)</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">2. Bob Dylan: <i>Chronicles (Vol: One)</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">3. David Boucher, Gary Browning (ed.): <i>The Political Art of Bob Dylan </i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">4. Howard Sounes: <i>Down the Highway – The Life of Bob Dylan</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">5. Jonathan Cott (ed.): <i>Dylan on Dylan – The Essential Interviews</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">6. Kevin J. H. Dettmar (ed.): <i>The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">7. Mike Marqusee: <i>Chimes of Freedom</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">8. Peter Doggett: <i>There’s A Riot Going On</i><br />
<i><br />
</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The blogger expresses his deep gratitude to <i>Rolling Stone</i>, <i>Mojo</i> and <i>Uncut</i>; Lawrence J. Epstein’s <i>Dylan Watch</i> on <a href="http://thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/">The Best American Poetry</a> blog and several articles on Dylan available on the Internet.<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><b>Image Courtesy</b></i>: rollingstone.com</div>shubhohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10661646608744489943noreply@blogger.com0Vadodara, Gujarat, India22.3073095 73.1810975999999322.217758 73.094521599999936 22.396860999999998 73.267673599999924tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663481787979786545.post-23230861052212938612011-05-24T02:53:00.056+05:302014-10-22T02:03:06.269+05:30To the Comrades in Bengal<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5FTTEbedIcU5yWYYt4XK9O5cyZAEisA9lib9Ss5LTtj55_8uhXyVPxJ0rWBexDifsutb0P9HDYE4sod3PgS-cETWqU94rCx_BdweT6BGXBD2D27v7spZlU74aRyDisA7qpTrDjOLNuDU/s1600/The+Left+will+bounce+back.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5FTTEbedIcU5yWYYt4XK9O5cyZAEisA9lib9Ss5LTtj55_8uhXyVPxJ0rWBexDifsutb0P9HDYE4sod3PgS-cETWqU94rCx_BdweT6BGXBD2D27v7spZlU74aRyDisA7qpTrDjOLNuDU/s400/The+Left+will+bounce+back.jpg" height="400" width="293" /></a>The 2011 Bengal assembly election is now over. A synthetically manufactured socio-political commotion that had embarked on a plotted journey from mid-2007 has finally arrived at its logical end. The much hyped circle of <i>poriborton</i> (change) is now complete. An assorted conglomerate of anti-Left elements, personified by the “magnanimous” Trinamool chieftain Mamata Banerjee have triumphed over a thirty-four years long uninterrupted Left Front rule in this eastern Indian state – the longest-serving elected communist government in the world. The euphoria over the victory in the anti-Left camp is therefore obvious. Prominent renegades, fence-sitter Leftists, drawing room revolutionaries and the awake-aware intellectuals have also joined to sing the celebration chorus. The winners and their embedded friends in the mainstream corporate media have announced with a big sigh of relief that Bengal, at last, is free. The people, we are told, is now liberated from a tyrannical and sluggish regime which has destroyed every aspect of democratic rights in the state. The Left’s terrible debacle, we are edified again and again, is therefore nothing less than historic. On the other side, a stoic silence has been observed from the losers who have gracefully accepted the people’s mandate and are presently tiring to protect their grass-root workers from the vicious attack launched against them by the victorious Trinamool goons.<br />
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A distinctive feature of this election, too obvious to be doubted, is the unprecedented, near total consolidation of anti-Left forces. All sorts of incongruent political elements, the ultra-Leftists, the separatists, the centrists as well as the reactionary Rightists, had deliberately assembled together with the singular aim to defeat the Left Front. This election has also seen an extraordinarily antagonistic, insolent and biased campaign by the corporate media against the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Though anti-Left campaign by the mainstream media is nothing new during elections, this time the modus operandi, dimension and range of the media campaign has actually crossed every imaginable limit. In an act of desperation, the corporate media perhaps have overlooked the fact that an overdose of anti-Left bias can turn counterproductive in the long run. </div>
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Yet, the results have come like a body blow to the Left Front, particularly to the CPI(M), for a special reason. The way in which the party has lost the elections is not only stunning but also unprecedented in the party’s legislative history in the state. Almost all of its stalwarts including incumbent chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee have lost in huge margins to the opposition; many greenhorns of the opposition combine have emerged as giant-killers. The Marxists are also been routed from the four districts considered to be their traditional stronghold – Bardhaman, Bankura, West Midnapore and Purulia. The most shocking news for the CPI(M) came from the Maoist infested Jangalmahal area where in the past two years over 122 party activists were brutally annihilated, their families were attacked, hundreds of homes were burnt and thousands were displaced. In the fourteen Maoist-affected rural constituencies in Jangalmahal the Left Front has won only seven assembly seats. They were defeated in their stronghold Salboni and also in Jhargram that includes Lalgarh – the epicenter of the Maoist movement in the region. Earlier, the masses had never completely believed the lies spread against the Left parties and their leaders. This time they did.<br />
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From the moment the results were declared, Left Front and CPI(M) nitpickers are having a field day. They are yelling from the rooftops: Isn’t it true that the Left Front has ultimately paid the price for their arrogance, for imposing their myopic vision, for their incapability to deliver good governance, for their autocratic approach to control each and every democratic institutions, for their absolute but needless interference in the daily lives of the people, for unleashing a reign of terror in the countryside to maintain their supremacy? Have they not tried to cripple the people of Bengal and prevented them to flourish like the people of many “vibrant” states of the country like Gujarat or Maharashtra? Why the Bengalis needed to leave their homeland in numbers in search of better education, medical facilities and jobs? The decade long Left rule, as one Rupert Murdock blessed media group tells us, has ruined the state to such a level that it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the new government to repair the damage in just one term.<br />
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Curiously enough, these viewpoints are not only raised by the vociferous critics of the Left but are also seen to be shared by many of their well-meaning advocates too. Even the Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary A.B. Bardhan has jumped into the fray with his “spirited” opinion that the electoral debacle in Bengal is the fallout of arrogance and corruption that has crept in among the cadres and leaders at certain levels and a series of “mistakes and sins of omission and commission.” (<i><a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2019481.ece">Source</a></i>) Everyone seems to have grown wiser after the event.<br />
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From close to 50 per cent in the previous 2006 elections, the Left Front’s share of total votes has sharply reduced to just over 41 per cent in the present. Though the opposition TMC-Congress combine has received just 6 per cent more votes than the Left parties and the CPI(M) has still retained a core base, compared to the 2009 Lok Sabha elections the Left’s vote-share has reduced an additional 2.2 per cent. How is it possible that the Marxists who brag on their incisive organizational strength failed to even sense this immense public mood? Is it not then a clear indication, as one observer has judiciously concluded, how much detached they were from ground reality? Former Left Front minister and noted essayist Ashok Mitra has bitterly criticized the Left leadership for displaying a “grotesque” optimism and “ridiculous self-confidence” on the eve of vote counting.<br />
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However, C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh has shown in their post-election analysis that this optimism most likely came from the fact that the Left Front had indeed managed to considerably improve its performance by gaining nearly 1.1 million additional votes compared to the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. “Not only was the Left Front vote in 2011 very close to that in 2006,” the authors have observed, “this increase was almost equal to the extent by which the Left Front had fallen short of the votes of the TMC-Congress combine in 2009.” The authors have further noted that even if “more people actually did come out to vote for Left parties than had done so in 2009 […] the party cadre apparently did not anticipate that <i>many more</i> people would turn out to vote for the opposition.” (Emphasis added) The opposition combine had the last laugh as 72 per cent of the 4.8 million overall votes which has increased between 2009 and 2011 have gone in their favor whereas the Left was able to garner only 23 per cent of the votes. (<i><a href="http://www.macroscan.org/fet/may11/fet180511West_Bengal.htm">Source</a></i>) A significant number of these additional votes came from the women voters. The women of Bengal, as some commentators have suggested, seems to have strongly identified with the famous lady. <br />
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Another point is worth noting. While the Left Front this time has received 19.6 million votes and ended up with just 61 of the 294 seats, in the previous 2006 assembly elections it had secured 19.8 million votes and yet won a massive 235 seats. Thus a fundamental question is raised by human rights activist and blogger Vidya Bhushan Rawat: “Just 6% of shift in votes has changed the fortunes of the left in West Bengal reflect a serious concern of all of us that we need to discuss on the issue of electoral reform. How can a mere 6% difference create loss of 162 seats?” (<i><a href="http://manukhsi.blogspot.com/2011/05/time-for-left-to-widen-its-base-and.html">Source</a></i>) The Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala, however, has lost the election by a slender margin and was also successful to slightly increase its vote-share from the 2006 assembly elections. LDF’s vote-share in the 2011 elections is just under less than one per cent of what the opposition UDF has acquired.<br />
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While gloating at the defeat, congenital Left detractors are pretending to be greatly worried about the Left’s future too! Advising to scrap Lenin and Stalin along with the ideological commitments, media-bred pundits have recommended that the Left parties in India now must “challenge existing beliefs and assumptions” to follow the path of revisionism and convert themselves into Social Democrats – just like what their Eastern European counterparts have done after the collapse of the Soviet Union. From the barrage of advices pitched towards them from all directions, the Left leaders and workers must be having a hard time to distinguish between the “friendly” and the “fiendish”. Furthermore, a malicious attack has been systematically instigated to dilute the historic contribution of the Left Front in Bengal – the remarkable role they have played to deepen grassroots democracy through decentralization of power, to uphold communal harmony for more than three successive decades, for distributing land to the sharecroppers, for bringing the poor and marginalized into the democratic mainstream and giving them the respect they deserve.<br />
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It was certain that when the law of Dialectics takes its own course, the Left Front government of Bengal was bound to fall. However strong it may be, no political party or alliance can remain invincible forever in a democracy. “In a democracy, political parties win and lose electoral battles,” commented senior journalist M.R. Narayan Swamy in a recent article. “There is no Shakespearean tragedy in the rout of the Left in West Bengal.” (<i><a href="http://www.newsindia-times.com/NewsIndiaTimes/20110520/5276964702434527493.htm">Source</a></i>) Why then some of us are feeling heartbroken and the others are trying to phrase the election results as a catastrophe for the Left? No doubt, the 34 year-long stint in absolute power is one of the key reasons behind such attitudes to develop. It will also be wrong to deny that a good section of the Left leadership and workers at various levels took the people of Bengal for granted and had started to think and behave like an everlasting ruler. Then there is another oblivious section among the Left’s extended family which had completely forgotten that winning elections is not the only purpose or the real marker of the significance and strength of the communist parties. The wise masses have given a fitting reply against these attitudes. <br />
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Has the time come to write an elegy for the Left? Will it be possible for the major Left parties in the country to recover from this enormous defeat? These are the fundamental questions which has prompted much discussion and debate in various corners in and outside the country today. Instead of backing away after the defeat, the Left parties must look-up at the silver lining outshining the gloom. The election results have provided a unique opportunity for them. First of all, after a long time they are now free from the apparent obligations of balancing their “words and deeds” while functioning to run three state governments in Bengal, Kerala and Tripura within the parameters of a fiercely competitive neo-liberal bourgeois democratic framework. After a long time, the Left parties will not have to constantly defend or explain their inner contradictions, alleged as “duplicity” or “hypocrisy” by the critics, for adopting the neo-liberal policies on one hand and opposing pro-US neo-liberalism on the other. They have nothing further to lose and therefore there will be no need now to go on defending the concentrated attack launched against them on this question. Instead, they have more time to focus on past mistakes, seriously introspect, undertake in-depth analysis and initiate systematic rational debates within itself which will eventually help to generate newer ideas on their future approaches to socio-political issues. They now have a golden opportunity to transform themselves from within and reinvent a creative Left Front – reflecting the aspirations of the masses, being uncompromising in their anti- imperialist, anti-liberalism stand.<br />
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The Left parties will have the wonderful chance to sharpen their praxis and launch waves after waves of vigorous mass movements against the mounting imposition of economic burdens on the livelihood of the people. They have the capacity to emerge as a dedicated, meaningful and uncompromising opposition force, protesting each and every anti-people policies of the corrupt Congress government at the central and its tributary in Bengal. We sincerely believe that it is only the Left parties who can take-up such a crusader role. They will also have more time now to rethink, reorganize and bounce back stronger with a viable, structurally reformative and alternative concept of governance.<br />
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On the other side, the Trinamool led government will gradually get strangled in its own web of perilous incongruity. The hideous rogue elements which are carefully kept obscured as of now will soon take full charge of the situation. News reports has already started rolling out that 38 per cent of the victorious Trinamool legislators are facing pending criminal cases against them which includes serious charges like murder, attempt to murder, theft and kidnapping. (<i><a href="http://editstreet.com/2011/05/mamata%E2%80%99s-brigade-69-mlas-facing-criminal-cases/">Source</a></i>) The crooks, buffoons and cunning opportunists, those who have been steadily creeping into the Trinamool bandwagon for quite some time will start demanding their pound of flesh. The “matured” media-made “honest and humble” new chief minister has afforded quite a lot of time and money to change the color of her skin. “I am against the Left here but not against Leftism. I share the values of the old Left,” she had boasted in order to emotionally impress the Left-minded voters just a few days before the crucial election. Though it looks like she has succeeded to impress them for the moment, the people of Bengal will eventually realize that a snake, after all, remains a snake. <br />
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Keeping in mind the core composition of the new rulers, certain possibilities are almost inevitable. Shortly after the honeymoon period is over, the feel-good factor will vanish into the blue. Many of the bombastic ideas, the duplicitous “leftist” slogans and hollow policy concepts will eventually get exposed as plain rubbish. The demand to fulfill the bogus promises will grow louder and louder. Bertrand Russell once made a distinction about the difference between change and progress. “Change,” he wrote, “is scientific, progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.” On their “progressive” path towards a “change”, Mamata Banerjee and her <i>Ma-Mati-Manush</i> (Mother-Earth-People) army of gallant warriors will start churning out a sufficient amount of illegitimate and divisive stuff and eventually create ground for a complete reversal of the circumstances. Time will come when the victors of today will recognize why it is too dangerous to gamble with people’s lives.<br />
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So, there is no real need to rush. Responding to the new chief minister’s “courteous” opening, popular CPI(M) leader Gautam Deb has written the following words in an article in his party organ <i>Ganashakti</i>: “We have taken an oath – for the sake of Bengal, for the sake of the country, for the sake of democracy and for the sake of courteousness we will return you your teachings in due course.” Deb then wrote with conviction, “We have taken an oath – to meet up again on the grand road of struggle.” <br />
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The primary task of the Left Front parties is to win back the people’s trust they have lost. It will be a terrible blunder to lose faith on the ordinary masses who are disenchanted right now. The corrupt elements occupying a good portion of the deck also need to be ruthlessly weeded out. The Left parties must concentrate on widening and strengthening their social base with more imagination, maturity and integrity. This is a pivotal task and is easy to say than done. But it is the only way for the Left Front to pull off a stunning comeback. </div>
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Meanwhile, we want to ask all the Leftist critics of the Left Front to spare some time and ponder why the neo-liberal, pro-US lobby requires to aggressively and repeatedly suggest the “end of the Left in India” after Left Front's defeat in Bengal and Kerala. We really do not want to disagree with these adored critics when they say that the Left in India is certainly not the Left Front parties alone. But how can we deny or ignore the significant contribution and relevance of the Left Front parties in contemporary India? Only an iniquitous mind or a fool can afford to do so. </div>
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<i>Image Courtesy</i>: thehindubusinessline.comshubhohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10661646608744489943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663481787979786545.post-24787602312166913122011-04-24T21:23:00.028+05:302014-10-22T02:03:23.205+05:30Media hyperbole and Bengal assembly elections<div align="justify" class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If we go through the standard news reports, analysis, editorials and opinion pieces been published daily in the national and local mainstream media concerning the ongoing assembly elections of Bengal, there can be little doubt in our minds about whom the voters would prefer to see in the next government. According to the obvious trends and predictions reflecting in the media, the people of Bengal have already “decided” to reject the worn out Left Front and embrace the impressive Trinamool Congress (TMC)-Indian National Congress (INC) opposition alliance. Experienced pollsters have concluded that in all probability, this grand alliance under the sagacious leadership of our famed railways minister Mamata Banerjee is heading for a clean sweep. Passionate supporters of the Left might still go on arguing that a sheer anti-Left bias in the print and television coverage during any election campaign is nothing new in Bengal. The spectrum of debate that gets released on various media forums during the election season has seldom been objective. They are also trying to point out that for a long time independent media organizations in the state have been completely polarized along political lines. But not many people are listening to them. The coming Bengal election results are therefore, as one thin on top editor recently wrote, “the easiest to predict in our electoral history in a very long time.”<br />
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The media is daily enlightening us why sympathizers of the Left needs to acknowledge that the situation on ground looks “qualitatively different” this time. We've all been repeatedly reminded how the famous lady has “singlehandedly shaken head-to-foot the patriarchal, ideology-fostered Left Front, led by the CPI(M)” and have pushed the Marxists almost to the brink of catastrophe after successfully capitalizing on the broad opposition to the Left Front government’s land acquisition policy. Isn’t it but true, we are asked, that the lady has elicited a suppressed desire for poriborton (change) that was simmering for years in the minds and hearts of the interned, subjugated and suffocated millions? In a predisposed tone, almost all of the mainstream media is barking daily that the people of Bengal want a phenomenon called Mamata Banerjee as their future leader – not a cold-blooded Stalinist chameleon! We are forewarned that the people do not want to breathe any more under a thirty-five year old, stagnant, wretched, ruthless and authoritarian regime. </div>
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One “eminent” Bengali academic, clearly elated by the Left Front and particularly the CPI(M)’s terrible performance in the 2009 parliamentary elections, blissfully wrote some time ago: “A spectre is haunting West Bengal – the spectre of change.” He then snarled further adding wisdom, wit and pathos to his unique view of history: “Moreover, as the end of History has been prognosticated, it seems that the era of ideologies too is over. The new generation does not give a fig for ideology.” (<i><a href="http://frontierweekly.com/pdf-files/vol-43-4/spectre-43-4.pdf">Source</a></i>) The message our astute academic have tried to articulate here is quite simple. To get rid of the Leftists, first of all, attack its ideology and push ahead the notion that the theories of all Communist parties as no more than “repertoire of slogans”. Leftist ideology, after all, is a dangerous thing! Therefore, if the new generation prefers custard apple to mango – give them custard apple. If they prefer to stand aloof – provide them an isolated haven to enjoy their life since people “dislike being supervised”. If someone runs the risk of believing himself better than others and start criticizing something for his petty private interests – allow him to do so. </div>
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Raising inane vilification against the CPI(M) is the stepping stone towards success today since it has become the easiest way to enter and get embedded with the Trinamool’s inner coterie. It matters little whether one needs to compromise one’s credibility and independence while doing so. Thus, the few illustrious “awake and aware” intellectuals and academics who have rose into prominence during the Singur-Nandigram stir finds absolutely no problem to extend their malleable necks to wear the golden buckle offered by Mamata Banerjee’s Railway Heritage Cultural Committee – plum posts, hefty salaries and attractive perks – as a “reward” for their services to the Trinamool Congress. The desire for “change” is so intense and the “greater cause” so sacred that we were told to keep our eyes shut and not to ask any uncomfortable questions that might jeopardize the “favorable situation”. “The true hypocrite,” remarked French writer Andre Gide “is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.” </div>
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The “success story” of the first batch of TMC intellectuals has certainly inspired a hoard of celebrities, intellectuals, film stars, big business agents, former civil servants, CBI and police bosses and even Marxist-Leninists to flock into the TMC bandwagon in great numbers. A manufactured euphoria of a potential TMC victory in the crucial assembly elections has lured these special brand of people further. Pushing the grass-root party men on the sidelines, many of them are now among the TMC chieftain’s “most trusted lieutenants”. All of them have turned into well-wishers of Bengal, howling under the pale summer moon to resuscitate the pitiable populace of a derelict state. Lies, as the saying goes, are more believable than the truth. </div>
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Just like the TMC band of intellectuals, the stakes seems to be too high for a section of the media also. A recent article in <i>The Hoot</i> by Asian News International’s (ANI) Kolkata bureau chief Ajitha Menon gives a shocking account of how a large section of the “independent” media in Bengal has entirely sold itself to the Trinamool chieftain and her party. High paid jobs in TMC sponsored television channels or newspapers, prominent positions in the executive committees of the railways and Municipal Corporations controlled by the party, powerful political posts endowed with several opportunities to make money and even party tickets are some of the many carrots that have been offered to a great number of journalists who, as Menon observes painfully, “seems have no pride left in their profession anymore and have become openly and acceptably corrupt, no longer even hiding behind the excuse of supposedly working for party mouthpieces […] The aspirations of journalists have moved from being an ethical watchdog for democracy, in the interest of the common man, towards power, position and money.” Menon bitterly writes that “several reporters, both senior and junior have become part of the Mamata coterie,” and even feel proud to “act as doorkeepers at Mamata Banerjee’s residence in South Kolkata.” (<i><a href="http://www.thehoot.org/web/home/searchdetail.php?sid=4621&bg=1">Source</a></i>) Never before journalists of the mainstream media was embedded with a single political party so deeply as today. Never before has such blatant partisanship been observed in Bengal as we are observing today.</div>
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The situation no doubt looks weird but is certainly not unprecedented. In several aspects Bengal’s political situation today has lots of amazing similarities with the events of 2001. During the 2001 assembly elections a similar pro-Mamata “wave” was hatched with a definite urge to remove the Left Front from power. We were informed that the people of Bengal was “craving” for a change in government, the Left was facing its “toughest challenge,” the depth of resentment against the Left was “at an all time high” and Mamata Banerjee, driven by her inordinate anti-Left stance was on the verge of “creating history” by personifying the resentment. An all-out slanderous anti-Left propaganda were launched by the mainstream media to manufacture public consent against the ruling Left Front. Through obvious one-sided reporting, the media created their own myth of “change”. Perception upon perception was mounted to persuade the people of Bengal to profess this synthetic myth. </div>
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In this post we want to illustrate how the mainstream media tries to influence the course of events during elections and works to fulfill a specific political agenda. We have based our argument on resources extracted from the website of ABP group’s flagship and influential English daily <i><a href="http://www.telegraphindia.com/">The Telegraph</a></i>. We chose the Kolkata daily since it is generally considered as a impartial and liberal newspaper which offers a fair and balanced reporting. </div>
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Protesting against the Congress high command’s “secret affairs” with the Left, Mamata Banerjee parted away from the Congress in 1997 and floated the Trinamool Congress. A year later she entered into an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This apparently strange alliance was based on a simple agenda – just like her, the extremely reactionary right-wing BJP is a traditional adversary of the Left. The alliance brought rich dividends for the TMC. Consolidating the anti-Left votes, the party went on winning seven parliamentary seats in 1998. The TMC joined the BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 1999 and Mamata Banerjee became the railways minister of the country. A year later, the party added one more seat to its tally by winning the traditional Left stronghold Panskura in East Midnapore. </div>
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The 1998 parliament elections gave a clear indication to Mamata Banerjee that it will be extremely difficult for her to conquest Bengal from the Left by peaceful, democratic means. Though the BJP-TMC alliance had successfully weakened the Congress in the state, it has failed to dent the imposing Left which continued to benefit from their absolute support base among the rural poor. Realizing that she must strike right away to take advantage of the favorable climate, a vicious blueprint was prepared to unleash a reign of terror in the rural Left bastions like Keshpur, Garbeta, Sabang, Pingla and Khejuri during the 1998 panchayat elections. In order to establish their hegemony in rural Bengal, local CPI(M) leaders and supporters were physically attacked, village after village were “liberated” by armed TMC cadres, many of them notorious criminals of those area. Brutal murder, looting and arson turned out to be a regular affair. Several CPI(M) supporters were forced to abandon their homes and take shelter in makeshift camps in fear of being killed. </div>
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The free run of Trinamool goons were earnestly backed by several erstwhile landlords who bearded a rancor against the Leftists for confiscating nearly 45,000 acres of fertile land from them and redistributing it among the landless poor. As some media reports had suggested, the violence against the CPI(M) was also actively assisted by clandestine People’s War group squads which had surfaced in the violence hit areas. The ultra-Left PWG with their technical proficiency in annihilation came as an excellent handy tool in the TMC sponsored class war in rural Bengal. Trinamool’s terror tactics reached its high point during the May 2000 Panskura bye-election. The election brought into open Mamata Banerjee’s vaunted “Panskura line” – a strategy of ruthless violence, booth capturing and all-out rigging orchestrated by local TMC henchmen like Mohammed Rafiq in favor of the TMC candidate Bikram Sarkar. In 2000, the TMC also grabbed the Kolkata Municipal Corporation. </div>
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Just before the 2001 assembly polls, Mamata Banerjee ditched the BJP and join forces with the Congress after the website <i>Tehelka</i> exposed BJP’s internal corruption. An opportunist to the core, her decision to ally with the Congress which she had discarded four years ago was based on simple electoral arithmetic. The combined vote share of the TMC-BJP alliance and the Congress in the 1998-99 general elections was near to 51 per cent against the 47 per cent of the Left. Pollsters of both the camps and a section of the mainstream media had predicted that since the Left Front’s position has grown relatively weaker after twenty-nine years of uninterrupted rule, a one-opposition vote added with even a slight erosion of the Left’s vote share can easily do the desired magic. Besides, Mamata Banerjee’s friends inside and outside the media had advised her that the BJP cannot be her right choice as a coalition partner against the Left considering Bengal’s huge 22 per cent Muslim vote bank. The Congress high command’s eagerness to dethrone the Left was so intense that no one had dared to ask why Mamata Banerjee did not need to announce a complete break with the NDA while clinching a deal with the Congress. </div>
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The chief sponsor of the TMC-Congress alliance, clearly, was the Congress president Sonia Gandhi who according to TMC insiders has always maintained a soft corner for their charming leader. <i>The Telegraph</i> mentioned in a report <i>Dejected Cong Still In Pursuit Of ‘Best Bargain’</i> on April, 2 that the Congress president has briefed Kamal Nath, Congress general secretary in charge of Bengal, to “reach an alliance by any means.” Kamal Nath was duly assisted by Pranab Mukherjee, a loyal and seasoned war horse who had taken the charge of the state Congress from the veteran ABA Ghani Khan Chowdhury just a few months before. On April, 3 the newspaper reported that “a potent alliance against the Left took shape today as Mamata Banerjee and the Congress sealed a seat-sharing deal.” The report further pointed out that the Congress and Trinamool would fight the polls under Mamata Banerjee’s leadership and remarked that the agreement has “virtually taken the wind out of the state leadership’s sail. Most leaders who had been vocal against Mamata’s bid to deny nomination to sitting legislators appeared to have accepted the arrangement.” </div>
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Realizing the significance of the development, the daily jumped into action. In the April, 4 editorial titled <i>United Stand</i>, the daily praised the efforts of Sonia Gandhi by saying: “One important element in the context was the refusal of Ms Sonia Gandhi, the Congress president, to shut the door on Ms Banerjee. Ms Gandhi kept herself aloof from the petty bickerings of the state Congress and saw in Ms Banerjee a leader who had a popular appeal among the people of West Bengal.” Calling the Congress “her natural habitat,” the editorial certified the Trinamool chieftain as “a leader who has been uncompromising and relentless in her opposition to left rule.” In a manifestly delighted tone, the editorial went on to optimistically predict that the alliance “takes Ms Banerjee a few steps closer to what has all along been her stated political objective: the defeat of the Left Front,” since the development “rules out the possibility of a split in the anti-left votes in West Bengal.”</div>
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What <i>The Telegraph</i> editorial meant by “petty bickerings of the state Congress” was the public discontent displayed by a section of the state Congress leaders who were “not too happy with the deal”. The daily reported on April, 7 that “Ghani Khan and Adhir Chowdhury do not intend to concede a single seat in their strongholds,” and did a follow up on the story the next day to report that the “last hurdle to a unified battle against the CPM-led Left Front was removed today with Mamata Banerjee and the Congress”. Though the report gave due importance to the fact that a host of state Congress leaders including Ghani Khan Chowdhury, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi and Somen Mitra “sat in the front row along with Nath and Mamata” while the announcement was made in a joint news conference, there were many indications in the same report that TMC’s seat sharing with the Congress did not pass on calmly. </div>
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A special correspondent of the newspaper continued the story on April, 9 with a slightly different twist under the banner headline <i>Resignation, Rumblings Greet Congress Deal</i>. “At least half-a-dozen Congress leaders, including ABA Ghani Khan Chowdhury and Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, have revealed their resentment at the manner in which a seat-share deal was struck.” In contradiction to the previous day’s report, the story had also revealed that several of the leaders present during the joint news conference were in fact sitting “glum-faced,” swallowing a bitter pill prescribed by the high command from party compulsion. The story also mentioned that Adhir Chowdhury, the Murshidabad leader who skipped the joint news conference “appeared determined to put up Independent candidates against the Trinamul nominees in at least two Assembly segments.”</div>
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The incidental or one sided versions of the daily stories about seat adjustment between the two parties gradually disappeared from the news pages. The newspaper made a banner headline report on April, 16 about the first joint election rally of the Trinamool-Congress alliance to mention how Pranab Mukherjee, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi and Somen Mitra, the three top Congress leaders, all her senior in politics, “proclaimed Mamata as their leader.” To circulate the message of a cordial domesticity between Mamata Banerjee and the Congress leaders who just a few days ago were questioning the efficacy of the alliance, the report gave a graphic depiction from the dais of unity depicting how the veteran leaders rained respect for the Trinamool chieftain. Quoting Pranab Mukherjee, the report in addition asserted that the alliance was born out of historic necessity – from “the demand of the common people,” and its sole aim is to remove the Left Front from power.</div>
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The English daily’s political polarization was pretty obvious in its April 20 coverage of a Jyoti Basu meeting in Dhuliyan, Murshidabad. The report acerbically mentioned how government funds were spend to bring stone-chips from nearby Pakur and thrown on the brick-laid path leading to the dais, how PWD rollers were pressed into service to take care of the ailing leader’s back and ensure as much comfort as possible “so that the CPM’s star campaigner could do his bit for the party.”</div>
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<i>The Telegraph</i>, which clearly doesn’t feel any affection for the Left made few interesting observations on the TMC-INC alliance in its April, 21 editorial. Fascinated by the “astute political understanding” of the Congress president Sonia Gandhi for reaching out to the Trinamool supremo from a “larger political necessity”, the editorial has discovered a pragmatic politician in Mamata Banerjee for dumping the BJP and choosing the Congress. The editorial had also speculated that “she still will have the vote of many saffron sympathizers, for whom the first priority remains the end of the red raj.” It is significant to note the effort undertaken by the newspaper to remove any doubt or confusion in the minds of its readers about the effectiveness of the Congress-Trinamool Congress alliance when it stressed in the editorial that the alliance “seems the best possible arithmetic against the Left Front.”</div>
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Four days later, the newspaper ran an extremely opinionated piece <i>Bengal Turns National Alliance Lab</i> where the staff analysts went on claiming at full volume that Bengal “could alter the future course of politics”. What the editorials were shying to express was vociferously expressed in this politically motivated article where the analysts had consciously inserted their preconceptions to build-up their case. Giving the TMC-INC combine a clear edge over the Left Front, the article claimed that the “Opposition never stood a better chance in Bengal,” since the “anti-incumbency factor is running so high that the Mamata-Congress alliance threatens to aggregate the non-Left vote in its favour.” An April, 28 feature article titled <i>Left High & Dry by Soaring Aspirations</i> pointed out at cracks in the Left Front’s traditional support base – the rural poor. Based on inputs from rural Midnapore, the report went on describing how the rural voters are thinking not to vote for the ruling alliance this time. “This time the ‘M’ party will find it difficult,” one Jadunath Hembrom bitterly tells the feature writer complaining about power deficiency in his village. Though there can be sufficient scope for suspicion on the authenticity of the report, the sheer anti-Left Front bias that lurks below the surface of such reports cannot go unnoticed.</div>
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The newspaper also gave “due importance” to the joint rallies addressed by Sonia Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee at the south Bengal districts of Midnapore and Burdwan. A banner story titled <i>Sonia for Sight, Mamata for Sound</i> on May, 4 adoringly gives a detail account about how the Congress president started “speaking Mamata’s language” after getting a taste of the Mamata “wind”. Inserting his own preconception, the reporter of the story noticeably mentioned about a “striking” similarity between the languages and tenor of the two leaders, emphasizing on how the Trinamool chieftain showing her gratitude gave the final-speech honor to Sonia Gandhi. The next day, the daily published another report to point out that after her Bengal tour, “Sonia was confident that Mamata will be the next chief minister,” and reported that Mamata Banerjee “has given a ‘firm commitment’ to Sonia Gandhi that she will not go back to the BJP-led alliance irrespective of the poll outcome.”</div>
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The editorial on the same day tries to analyze the importance of the Bengal elections and expounding the impact it might produce “all the way in New Delhi”. “In West Bengal, the Congress hopes to ride on a Mamata Banerjee wave,” the editorial comments. It then went on glorifying the Trinamool chieftain’s “immense popularity,” asserting the readers about how she has “touched a chord in the heart of West Bengal’s disaffected. Disaffection towards the Left Front, like loyalty towards it, cuts across social and economic boundaries. Ms Banerjee personifies this disaffection. […] The articulation of the discontent may well constitute one of the major surprises of this election.”</div>
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On May 8, the daily published another opinion piece which found “a pathetic manifestation of the bankruptcy of political dialogue” put into practice by both the contending parties during the poll campaign and mourns that the new trend “signals the demise of the bhadralok brand of politics”. Though the article does not elaborate what this “bhadralok (gentleman) brand of politics” actually means, it didn’t blinked twice to say that the “the first attack on bhadralok politics in West Bengal came from the left”. Mamata Banerjee, according to the article, was just “matching the Marxists in their words and action”. The article furthermore pointed out that, since the left “has become the most recognizable face of bhadralok politics” from the day it came to power, it is nothing wrong for Mamata Banerjee to shun bhadralok politics and “degrades the level of political discourse to cheap entertainment.” She is after all “the face of the anti-establishment movement. Hers is the mission to break the political status quo.” A fantastic analysis indeed!</div>
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On May 9, the newspaper published three interesting stories. The first one was based on the several opinion polls conducted by various independent agencies which had predicted a fifty-fifty chance for the opposition combine to come in power. Referring to the opinion poll results, the report tried to keep alive the hope that the Trinamool Congress-Congress combine has a good chance to “sail with the wind into the corridors of Writers’ Buildings” and end the twenty-four years of communist rule in the state. The second report was based on chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s press meet. It starts citing a “seemingly confident” chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and then twists the report to mention that Bhattacharjee has “promised the Left Front would give a responsible Opposition to West Bengal”. According to the report, the chief minister was “forced to admit that the Left was facing its most difficult challenge; the government had failed to live up to the expectations of people…..” The third report that attempted to divulge Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s political future was a stunning display of how <i>The Telegraph</i> can became terribly prejudiced to push a particular viewpoint instead of reporting in an objective manner. “Never before have the prospects of a chief ministerial candidate been doubted so much,” the speculative report claimed after conducting a micro opinion poll at the Jadavpur 8B bus stand among twenty commuters and found that “more than half the respondents were not sure of his prospects”! “Bhattacharjee is better placed to win in Jadavpur than the CPM is to win in Bengal,” was the inevitable conclusion of this fictitious report.</div>
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But a marked difference can be seen in another story that had appeared on May, 10. The story tried to sense the minds of Bengal businessmen and find out why they are “throwing their lot behind the leader of a party founded with the vow to make them an extinct species.” Obliquely indicating at CPI(M)’s trade union wing CITU for pushing out industry from Bengal due to their militant trade unionism, the report cited unnamed and faceless “sources” from the business world to praise Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee who has “proved himself to be proactive to industry in a very short time,” and for “talking about the right things” the business world like to hear. The objective behind the story was plain and simple – strongly condemn CITU, condemn the policies and programmes of the CPI(M) but at the same time start heaping praise on Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as the poster boy of reforms. It took some more time for the corporate media to achieve its biggest success when Bhattacharjee fell pray to this cunning strategy. But that is another story to tell.</div>
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<span style="color: red;">[5]</span></div>
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On May 11, two days before the results, <i>The Telegraph</i> had a story on Mamata Banerjee to describe how confident she was about her victory. “I have no doubt that we are coming to power. We are the rising sun tomorrow morning,” a confident Mamata Banerjee told the reporter “with her lips spread in a smile and her fingers parting in a ‘V’.” On the counting day, the daily reported how Trinamool Congress activists made elaborate preparations at their chieftain’s south Kolkata residence “in anticipation of her victory in the polls.”</div>
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But after all the hype and hyperbole, the high-flying opposition alliance received a lethal blow from the Bengal electorate and ended up landing on their nose. The alliance which was cocksure about forming the next government was successful to win only 86 seats against the 199 seats won by the Left Front. The Front not only swept the countryside but also achieved remarkable success in urban and industrial areas. In many so called “neck to neck” seats marked by the pollsters, Left Front candidates won by comfortable margins. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, whose prospects <i>The Telegraph</i> had doubted, won the Jadavpur seat by more than 29,000 votes. Soon after the results were declared, a disgraced Mamata Banerjee offered to resign owning moral responsibility for her alliance’s defeat and vanished from public view.</div>
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The staff analysts of <i>The Telegraph</i>, those who had previously visioned a sure success of the opposition alliance, made a 360 degree somersault to attack Mamata Banerjee for “not been able to translate resentment into votes and votes into seats.” Squarely putting back all the trash created by them on the Trinamool chieftain’s doorsill, the analysts lampooned her by saying, “She was preparing to take credit for a victory she assumed was inevitable.” “She began with several advantages,” another angry analyst wrote, “and then went about dismantling and reducing them to irreversible losses.” An editorial on May 16 accused the TMC chieftain for being “her own worst enemy,” and called her a leader “completely unprepared for defeat.” The editorial left no stone unturned to harshly criticize her for choosing “to nurse her own sense of hurt and disappointment precisely at the time when her party workers and supporters needed her to be at their side.” Terming the verdict as “one of the great anti-climaxes in the history of West Bengal politics,” the editorial argued that her “egocentric behaviour may be at the root of the debacle the Trinamool Congress has suffered.”</div>
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On May 23, eminent economist, noted author and a former Left Front minister Dr. Ashok Mitra’s scathing article <i>Look Back In Triumph</i> appeared in the pages of <i>The Telegraph</i>. Lambasting the media’s vindictive political role Dr. Mitra, wrote:</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;">A few months ahead of the election date, important segments of the media launched a furious campaign of dissembling. The people of West Bengal, it was ipso facto evident, want a different regime to rule them and they, the media, are ambassadors extraordinary, directly despatched by the Almighty to bring about this change. The media set to work. They posted hilarious imaginary tales about how the minds of the voters were working in district after district and constituency after constituency. Once such an exercise is on, it is contaminating: A’s gossip becomes B’s staple, B’s gossip becomes C’s staple, and so on down the line, with illusion feeding upon illusion. […]</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;">None of the media bothered to find out whether voters in West Bengal, in town and country, could have a mind of their own and might have benefited in some measure or other on account of the activities of the Left Front regime in the course of the past two and a half decades. They regarded the electorate in West Bengal as dummies who would vote as the media would direct them to.</span></i></div>
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<span style="color: red;">[6]</span></div>
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Mainstream media constantly tries to thrust particular political viewpoints, omits actual facts, misinforms, systematically makes or breaks a candidate’s popularity or a party’s success and failure through obvious one-sided reporting. Sometimes they succeed; sometimes they fail but pretend that they didn’t. Keeping in mind the 2001 events, we humbly offer a suggestion to the pompous TMC leaders and their obsessive supporters – do not get carried away by the media hyperbole. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. </div>
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<i>Postscript:</i> While tracing the mainstream English and regional language media’s blatant projection of Mamata Banerjee as the next chief minister, R Uma Maheshwari wrote in a most recent article in <i>The Hoot</i> that “Mamata seems more like a media candidate than that of a party”. Titled “A media bubble called Mamata?” the article points out how <i>The Telegraph</i>, for instance, seems to have “appointed itself the election manager of Mamata Banerjee / Trinamool.” Rather than focusing on crucial socio-political issues, the motivated media has concentrated, as Maheshwari has observed, on a a single-point “hate campaign not just against the Left Front, but Communist ideology itself.” “Today the poll battle is not merely, as I see it, about Mamata and the Left, per se, but a fight between different forms of economic and ideological developments. It is a concerted effort made by a section of media, supported by a certain class, against Communism,” Maheshwari comments bitterly. (<i><a href="http://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=5252&mod=1&pg=1&sectionId=2&valid=true">Source</a></i>)</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>I</i><i>mage Courtesy:</i> bengalnewz.blogspot.com</span></div>
shubhohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10661646608744489943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663481787979786545.post-1462246508610169252011-02-21T23:36:00.013+05:302014-10-22T02:45:31.189+05:30Looking at the Egyptian uprising<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNzskioRK9ETFGvPDHrPt1_VHI1E9cmmtawQSPM-NYfpDKzfeslez6v933XIXdYHln9UdgKZGsBo0fJ8_vY5AYBNvIGIl_wnVF_cyd_LkrgxHn-hV6gYoQRIruAULOLVhSAi9YofyyPgM/s1600/Tara+Todras-Whitehill-AP-time.com2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNzskioRK9ETFGvPDHrPt1_VHI1E9cmmtawQSPM-NYfpDKzfeslez6v933XIXdYHln9UdgKZGsBo0fJ8_vY5AYBNvIGIl_wnVF_cyd_LkrgxHn-hV6gYoQRIruAULOLVhSAi9YofyyPgM/s400/Tara+Todras-Whitehill-AP-time.com2.jpg" height="400" width="287" /></a></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">It all began in a rural Tunisian town. Mohamed Bouazizi, who sold fruits and vegetables on the streets to make a living for himself and his impoverished family, was publicly humiliated on December 17 by a policewoman Fedya Hamdi. Hamdi slapped Bouazizi in the face, spat at him and forcefully confiscated his goods and weighing scale. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">A</span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">n angry and distressed Bouazizi, who often suffered harassment and abuse at the hands of the local police, went to complain his grievances to the local municipal officials but failed to get any recourse as the officials just refused to meet him. As an act of desperation</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">, </span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Bouazizi doused himself with inflammable fluid and set his body on fire outside the municipal office. The plight of young Bouazizi became the catalyst that sparked off massive anger against the regime of president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who ruled </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Tunisia</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> since 1987 with an iron fist. Thousands of furious Tunisians came out on the streets to protest against police brutality, the corrupt power structure, soaring unemployment and unending poverty. Weeks of violent demonstrations followed as protesters clashed with the state security forces. Members of the police force clubbed the unarmed anti-regime protesters and open fired on them killing dozens. Sensing the enraging public mood, Ben Ali visited the bedside of Bouazizi in an attempt to draw public support. He also dissolved the government, promised legislative elections within six months and assured to take meaningful steps toward political reform. But his entire attempt was all but too late. </span></span></span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">On January 4, </span></span></span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Bouazizi succumbed to his injuries escalating unrest and further violence.</span></span></span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> On January 14</span></span></span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">, president Ben Ali fled the capital </span><st1:state st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Tunis</span></st1:state><span style="font-size: 100%;"> with his wife Leila in a private jet to </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Saudi Arabia</span></st1:country-region></st1:place></span></span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span></span></span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">shortly </span></span></span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">after the army general Rachid Ammar refused to back his orders to keep shooting on the protesters</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">. According to French agencies, the 74-year-old dethroned president </span></span></span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">suffered a stroke and </span></span></span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">is now lying in coma at a Saudi hospital</span></span></span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">.</span></span></span><br />
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">The success of the Tunisian uprising, the first of its kind in an Arab country, has completely surprised every section of the Arab society. Within a few days, popular discontent inspired by the Tunisian example expanded to other authoritative regimes of the Arab world. In </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Algeria</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">, food riots broke out in several towns over the sudden price hike of food staples such as flour, sugar and oil. The unrest over soaring food price and unemployment prompted the Algerian government to announce necessary plans to protect the citizens from the rising cost of living. Demonstrations against price increases, anti-people economic policies, as well as high unemployment and poverty levels have also been echoed in </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Jordan</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">. In an effort to rejuvenate his regime after protests exploded in </span><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Amman</span></st1:city><span style="font-size: 100%;">, King Abdullah of </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Jordan</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> fired his present government. Facing demonstrations demanding his downfall and political reforms, President Ali Abdullah Saleh of </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Yemen</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> who has ruled the country since 1990, had to publicly promise that he would not attempt to pass the presidency to his son, Ahmed. From January 25, a spontaneous uprising of the masses from all walks of life exploded on the streets of </span><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Cairo</span></st1:city><span style="font-size: 100%;">, </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Alexandria</span></st1:city></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">, and other Egyptian cities against President Hosni Mubarak’s corrupt and </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">instinctively</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> repressive political regime. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">The eighteen days of </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">momentous popular uprising have </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">created history by forcing out Mubarak of power</span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="A0"><b><span style="font-size: 100%;">The uprising in Egypt</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">The early developments in </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> were sending out mixed signals. The uprising first broke out </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">in the streets of capital </span><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Cairo</span></st1:city><span style="font-size: 100%;"> and the port city of </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Suez</span></st1:city></st1:place><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">R</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">iot police cracked down on the protesters with </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">teargas, water cannon and rubber bullets</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> when thousands of protesters defied the night time curfew in </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Cairo</span></st1:city></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> and turned their anger on symbols of the state, torching police cars along with the ruling </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">National Democratic Party</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> headquarters.</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Army tanks rolled into the streets, the government </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">blocked cell phones and Internet access.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Facing an unprecedented resentment of </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">ordinary Egyptians who came out in support of the uprising in large numbers</span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">, 82-years-old Mubarak appeared on national television to suggest that he will never willingly resign</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">.</span><b><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span></b><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">As a pre-emptive gesture to appease the masses of protesters and tamp down the unrest, he fired the present cabinet, hastily reshuffled the deck and appointed his long serving intelligence service chief Omar Suleiman as the new vice-president.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Mubarak’s decision to appoint Suleiman as vice-president was an embarrassing retreat from his earlier plan to promote his younger son Gamal for the post. The presumptive heir apparent was </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">widely perceived as a </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">hate figure for his close </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">connections with the fabulously wealthy and </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">corrupt business elite</span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">. Mubarak explored all viable options to save his regime including desperate efforts to reach out at his closest ally, the </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> government for escorting him out of the volatile state of affairs. He was clearly killing time so that the protests fizzle out naturally. But nothing really worked in his favor. </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">The unrest swelled f</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">ollowing a violent counter-demonstration mounted by organized pro-Mubarak mobs on the peaceful protesters. Even the army he had nurtured so graciously did not come to his rescue. Blasting the myth that the Arab and Islamic worlds are inapt for peaceful protests, thousands of brave Egyptians across the country and on Tahrir Square</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> – </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">including significant numbers of women and children</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> – </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">remained peaceful but determined with a single message for the hated president: </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Irhal!</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> (Leave!) On 11 February evening, </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Omar Suleiman appeared on television to announce Mubarak's resignation and the transfer of the powers to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">The people of </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> have finally won their battle.</span></span></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">How did the Egyptians who had failed to rise in the past three decades suddenly revolted in such a fascinating way? How did they maintain their nerves for eighteen long days to courageously resist each and every reactionary attacks of the Mubarak regime? Mubarak was essentially a military man with all the qualities required for an authoritarian dictator. He had established a mechanism that allowed him and the ruling elite to exercise absolute control over the Egyptian society and successfully sustained the regime for thirty long years. One of the tools of state repression was a draconian Emergency Law, which has been in force since 1981, the year he became president after Anwar Sadat’s assassination. This notorious law allowed the government to crack down on political critics; thousands of civilians were harassed, arrested and imprisoned without any warrants. Public gatherings of more than five people without prior official permission were termed as illegal. </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Human Rights Watch</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> (HRW) published a report on January 30, 2011 which observes that, “…law enforcement officials have used torture and ill-treatment on a widespread, deliberate, and systematic basis over the past two decades to glean confessions and information, or to punish detainees. The United Nations Committee Against Torture has confirmed the systematic nature of torture in </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">.” The report further stated that the nature of torture constitute “an epidemic of habitual, widespread, and deliberate torture perpetrated on a regular basis by security forces against political dissidents, Islamists allegedly engaged in terrorist activity, and ordinary citizens suspected of links to criminal activity or who simply look suspicious.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Therefore, when Mubarak tried to retain his own grip on the presidency by securing a transfer of power to Omar Suleiman, the strategy didn't work. The people of </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">don't trust</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Suleiman as the man who can bring democracy to the country. After all, Suleiman is known to be a CIA point man in </span><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Cairo</span></st1:city><span style="font-size: 100%;">, favored by the </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> for his loyalty and effectiveness. As the chief of the intelligence service, he has negotiated directly with top CIA officials and played a significant role in CIA</span></span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">'</span></span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">s infamous “rendition” program – a covert plot under which terror suspects are kidnapped from around the world and secretly detained in “friendly” countries like </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> to interrogate and seek actionable intelligence. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Ron Suskind</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">'</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">s book, </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">The One Percent Doctrine</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> has exposed how </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Suleiman had considerably helped the Bush administration to build up the case for </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">America's</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;"> invasion of </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Iraq</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">. Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda suspect who knew Bin Laden personally was captured in </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Pakistan</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;"> and </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">rendered to </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> for questioning</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">While in the custody of the Egyptian intelligence service,</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Suleiman's team brutally tortured him to give a false confession that Saddam Hussein was in the process to provide biological and chemical weapons to al-Qaeda. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">To justify the invasion of </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Iraq</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">, this was precisely the kind of information that the Bush administration was looking for. </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Libi</span></span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">'</span></span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">s confession was brought into play as one of the </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">key evidence </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">to make a case for war by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in his February 2003 speech to the United Nations. Omar Suleiman is also a favorite to </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Israel</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">. He was instrumental for </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt's</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> efforts to demolish the tunnels that have been used by Hamas to smuggle weapons and foodstuffs into Gaza Strip. The Mubarak regime </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">was extremely hostile to </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Hamas, which is an offshoot of </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt's</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> strongest opposition movement the Muslim Brotherhood.</span></div>
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<b><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> in dilemma</span></b></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Hosni Mubarak has been the most indispensable </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;"> ally in the </span><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Middle East</span></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">. Over the past three decades, the </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> administration has aided and supported the puppet regime to maintain their strategic benefits in the region. </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;"> became the second biggest recipient of American aid after </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Israel</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">. “Aside from some leftover Soviet equipment from the </span><st1:placetype st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">pre-Camp</span></st1:placetype><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><st1:placename st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">David</span></st1:placename><span style="font-size: 100%;"> era (before 1979), the Egyptian military is virtually made in the </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">USA</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">,” wrote William Hartung in an article for </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Huffington Post</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">. Under the </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Foreign Military Financing</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> (FMF) and </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">International Military Education and Training</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> (IMET) programs, the US Department of Defense has generously bestowed the Egyptian army with around $1.3 billion in military aid every year in return for </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;">’s support in </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">America's</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> pro-Israel policies, for isolating Hamas and for helping to pin down Muslim fundamentalists. The aid, however, came with a condition. </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;"> was bound to spend the entire funds to purchase equipments only from the </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> arms industry. The brilliant deal ensures that the funds go back into the </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> economy to subsidize one of the country's most powerful political lobbies. </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;"> aid to </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> also includes funding for international narcotics control and law enforcement; nonproliferation, anti-terrorism and de-mining; combating weapons of mass destruction; counter-terrorism and security sector reforms. (</span><i><a href="http://original.antiwar.com/deen/2011/02/11/egypts-us-armed-military-in-transitory-commanding-role%20/"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">)</span></span></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">At the beginning, the </span><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">was clearly supporting </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">the Mubarak government and continued to keep a friendly dialogue with the regime</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">. </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, who considers “President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family,” was quite sure that, “the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people”. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">In response to the question whether Mubarak is a dictator, US Vice-President Joe Biden said in a PBS interview: “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he's been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region […] I would not refer to him as a dictator”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;">When the protests swelled, the same leaders tried to backtrack and urged for his swift departure, </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">expressed sympathy with the protesters,</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">advocated democratic reforms and peaceful transition of power.</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> They changed tone again a</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">fter Mubarak was dethroned and started eulogizing the uprising</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> by throwing their weight behind the pro-democracy movement. </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">President Barack Obama promptly discovered the </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">power of human dignity</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> and began to sing the praises of democracy. “</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">For Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day,” he remarked in</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> his characteristic “saying nicely but saying naught” style</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">.</span></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">However, it must be taken into account that the same leaders did absolutely nothing when they were well acquainted with all the facts about the corrupt, repressive and authoritarian regime. Do we have to believe that they were not well informed </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">about the regime's resistance to democratic reform?</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Superbly revealing the </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> hypocrisy, Noam Chomsky has said in a recent interview: “... there have been many times when some favored dictator has lost control or is in danger of losing control. There's a kind of a standard routine [ ... ] keep supporting them as long as possible; then, when it becomes unsustainable - typically, say, if the army shifts sides - switch 180 degrees, </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">claim to have been on the side of the people all along, erase the past, and then make whatever moves are possible to restore the old system under new names</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">. That succeeds or fails depending on the circumstances.” (Emphasis added)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;">The world's only “superpower” which has turned into a </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">powerless spectator after failing to anticipate the process of change or to influence the course of events in the Arab world is definitely worried today. </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> plotters have always tried to obstruct promotion of democracy in the region fearing the emergence of Islamist regimes. What will they do now? </span><st1:state st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Washington</span></st1:state></span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">'</span></span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">s </span><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Middle East</span></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> policymakers will run into deep trouble if the Arab world now </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">progress </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">towards genuine democracy and start resisted their rapacious policies.</span></span></div>
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<span class="A0"><b><span style="font-size: 100%;">The “neutral” army</span></b></span></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egyptians generally view their corrupt and often torture-prone police force as </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">bultagia</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">, or thugs. In sharp contrast, the Egyptian Armed Forces command wide respect and </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">influence over Egyptian society</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">. There are definite reasons behind this popularity. The Egyptian army is enormous in size. It is the world's 11th largest force with a troop strength of 468,500 soldiers. Being a direct </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">beneficiary of the huge American aid, t</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">he </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">bureaucratic </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">army</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> organization</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> has been the real powerhouse in the decisions on how the </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">US</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> provided funds are spent. Calling the </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egyptian army</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> “</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">the largest corporate conglomerate in </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">” Professor Robert D Springborg wrote in </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">The Independent, </span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">that “</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">the military is central to the narrative and historical reality of the emergence of contemporary </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">.” He further explicates that the sprawling economic empire of the army is not limited within the military industry but has also extended deep into civilian domains. It produces a vast array of consumer goods and has ventured into profitable businesses like road and housing construction, shopping malls, beach resorts and even sports event management. The military economy has continued to expand since “formerly state owned civilian enterprises being handed over to military control.” (</span><i><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-vast-and-complex-military-machine-will-decide-its-nationrsquos-future-2212491.html"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">)</span></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">By refusing to level their guns in defense of the President or applying forces on the protesters, the army's image has </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">further improved</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">in the eyes of the ordinary people</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">. But how neutral is the army which is now the </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">de facto rulers of </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">and is supposed to carry out the process of democratic transition? Isn't it the same force which was closely tied and controlled by the presidential palace since October 1981, protecting the </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">corrupt political system</span><b><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span></b><b><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">of the</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span></b><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">regime </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">from behind the scenes</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> with absolute loyalty? </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">In return</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">, </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">the ruling regime</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> has </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">immensely subsidized the army and made it a wealthy, influential economic force. </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Only a few days back, the army bosses were extremely close to Mubarak politically and personally. Though the army </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Supreme Council has promised for free and fair elections under a revised constitution, </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">it will not be wise to presume that the Egyptian army has suddenly turned into a pro-people's force. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Citing human rights activist Hossam Bahgat,</span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The Guardian</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> has reported that since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, the army has secretly detained, interrogated and severely tortured hundreds, and possibly thousands of anti-government protesters as an organized campaign of intimidation. The pattern of arrests confirms that “the military had been conducting a campaign to break the protests.” According to the report, </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Human Rights Watch</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> has “documented 119 such arrests of civilians by the military but believes there are many more.” </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">(</span><i><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/09/egypt-army-detentions-torture-accused"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">)</span></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">What</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> gave Mubarak the final push is still not clear. </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Several reports have confirmed that the</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> rank and file</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> soldiers who were </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">sent into </span><st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Tahrir Square</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">were sympathetic to </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">the people on the streets. Some reports have even suggested that there was a prevailing mood among a section of the soldiers that if they were ordered to shoot the people, they might not hesitate to shoot whoever issued the order instead. </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Contrary to some media observers, the</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Supreme Council of the Armed Forces</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> that posed as </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">neutral observers during the developments </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">has actually reacted in a clever and calculated way. Rather than standing behind a weak, isolated and undermined President, they have figured out that it will be far more beneficial for them to protect the status and credibility of the army by </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">pretending to be on the side of the people and democracy. This “neutral” role will raise their authority among the people</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> and help to </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">consolidate their grip on power</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> when a </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">power vacuum </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">opens up by the uprising.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 100%;">The fragmented opposition</span></b></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">To diminish all challengers to his rule, </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Mubarak had harshly suppressed all opposition parties and potential rivals in a systematic way</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">. So it was not unexpected when </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Mubarak was re-elected in the first contested presidential election with 88 percent of the vote in September 2005. This was for the first time </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">that the </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">stifled </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">opposition </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">parties were allowed to file nomination against him. It was also </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">the first time when Egyptians were able to vote for multiple candidates</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">.</span></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">The</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> noticeable absence of</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> a strong political leadership was one of the salient features of the recent uprising. During the</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> eighteen days of demonstrations,</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> it became pretty clear that none of the anti-Mubarak opposition parties were in charge of the protests. </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">The massive state sponsored repression has fragmented and weakened all opposition movements in </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> including the oldest and strongest movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Mubarak's regime</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> was </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">deeply hostile to the Brotherhood and in the last few years, has heavily cracked down on </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">its leaders.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Hundreds of them have ended up in jail after been falsely charged with political offences.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Fearing further suppression from the ruling regime that would threaten the movement's existence,</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> the Brotherhood leadership restrained </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">from political activities, concentrating more on </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">social-welfare programs like providing cheap education and health care to the poor masses. The Brotherhood was able to sustain its considerable support base among the poor masses through these social-welfare programs. </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">The group had </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">reacted </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">to the </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">popular protests with caution, did not formally endorse the protests or</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> contributed to organize </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">it</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Despite the hesitant approach,</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> its leaders have </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">encouraged the supporters to join in the demonstrations and are credited for protecting anti-Mubarak protesters when they were attacked in </span><st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Tahrir Square</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="font-size: 100%;"> by the violent pro-regime mob</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;">Former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Nobel laureate Mohammad ElBaradei, who has </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">returned to </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;"> from his </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Vienna</span></st1:city></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> home</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> to join the protests, </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">is </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">widely </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">respected by almost everyone involved in the anti-Mubarak movement. He has </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">founded the National Association for Change – a </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">coalition</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> group of the opposition and has developed useful </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">relations with the Muslim Brotherhood</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">.</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> However, </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">ElBaradei</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">represents the minority middle-class anti-regime circles, </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">is </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">inexperienced in politics and does not have enough influence on the ordinary masses. It will therefore not be easy for </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">ElBaradei</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> to rise above more than a transitional figure. Leaders and members of the liberal democratic Wafd party and the moderate socialist party Tagammo have joined the </span><st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Tahrir Square</span></st1:address></st1:street><span style="font-size: 100%;"> demonstrations with other opposition groups. But both the parties are weak and do not have much authority over the people. Other opposition groups like the Egyptian Movement for Change or </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Kefayah</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> (Enough) which comprises Islamists, Marxists, nationalists, liberal and secularists or the </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">leftist April 6 Youth Movement </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">which comprises</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">educated and young</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> Leftists, socialists and pro-labor people were actively </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">involved with </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">organizing and mobilizing </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">demonstrations in Tahrir Square.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> The April 6 Youth Movement which started as a Facebook page in 2008, has </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">planted</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> the seeds of the revolt by </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">extensively using the cyberspace. Though undervalued by the western media, trade unions and unofficial workers organizations have also played an important role in the anti-Mubarak demonstrations. </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">However, other than the Muslim Brotherhood, no other opposition group stands to benefit from the situation as none of them have much credibility among the workers, men and women, the youth and the poor. They neither have a well-organized political party to influence the course of events after the dust settles. </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">(</span><i><a href="http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/briefings/snia-05865.pdf"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">)</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 100%;">The </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 100%;">cyberspace</span></b><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><b><span style="font-size: 100%;">revolutionaries</span></b></div>
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<span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">The western media went gaga to spread the</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> myth of a true “Facebook revolution” </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">in </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">. They have excitedly </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">described the pivotal role of the Internet generation for </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">accelerating the protests through social media sites but have rarely stressed that these powerful tools cannot be an alternate to physical mobilization and mass organization. The cyber revolutionaries of </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> must be applauded for successfully drawing in thousands of Egyptians and for consolidating their anger against the ruling regime. But any movement that center around the cyberspace is often found to be leaderless and chaotic. Nicholas Thompson in </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">The New Yorker</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> has rightly asked, “…are the charismatic people who are best at leading protests really the people you want to lead your country after the government changes? […] if a government falls, who, then, will run it?” Google executive Wael Ghonim or blogger Amr Salama are world-famous now for their innovative cyber activism. The duo met the army generals recently, discussed on reforms with them and returned convinced by their commitment for democracy. This absolute faith on the army generals seems a bit naive. On the same day, a spokesman for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has found criticizing the wave of strikes staged by public sector workers across </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> for better pay and permanent jobs. The army considers that the strikes, clearly inspired by the mass movement that has toppled Mubarak, will “</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">lead to negative results”</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">. </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Al Jazeera</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> has reported that the army leaders are reportedly planning to “ban meetings by labor unions or professional syndicates, effectively forbidding strikes.” </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">(</span><i><a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/201121484743645699.html"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;">Cyber activism alone is incapable of giving the necessary organized expression to a movement which a well-organized political party can. Neither can it sustain the revolutionary spirit of the masses under brutal state repression. Without underestimating the role of the cyber revolutionaries who have ignited the movement in </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">, can we respectfully ask them, what if the armed soldiers, instead of putting flower in their gun barrel, had trained their deadly weapons and start firing bullets at the people? Will the anti-Mubarak demonstrations still have continued to expand through cyberspace or slipped out of their hands? In Moammar Gaddafi</span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">'</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">s </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Libya</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">, the armed forces have reacted differently. The anti-government demonstrations have been harshly suppressed with a combination of armed militias and elite forces. It is the ordinary people on the streets who are courageously resisting the fierce state crackdown in </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Libya</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;">, </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Bahrain</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;"> and elsewhere in the </span><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Middle East</span></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;">. W</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">ithout the protection of a mass movement </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">cyber activism is powerless.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 100%;">Conclusion</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;">Moustafa El-Gendy</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">, former independent member of </span><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt's</span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size: 100%;"> parliament and part of the opposition Wafd Party has emphatically said in a recent interview with </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">The New Yorker</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">: “The people in </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> love the Army. Of course, we understand that we cannot go to the Army and say, ‘Okay, now you go away.’… No, we don't want this. We want the Army to protect the constitution that we will write all together. […] the real power is the Army.” The weak opposition political parties are unable to take the risk to openly criticize the army because, as </span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Professor Springborg has observed,</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> “such criticism would not strike a chord with most Egyptians.” Instead, it seems to be a more practical way out for them to “strike a deal with the military to retain some power”. </span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Professor Springborg has further pointed out that, “…</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">under the Egyptian constitution, neither the legislature nor civil society can exert any meaningful control over the military”. Due to the information embargo that has been successfully imposed in the country for a long time, civil society “has no access to relevant information about the armed forces.” This is what every democracy seeking Egyptians should be alarmed about. The army cannot be a solution to the </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> crisis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;">Revolution is a sweet little word. Genuine revolution comes only after smashing the existing state power, not by toppling the head of a regime. The almost “Gandhian” revolution in </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> therefore </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">cannot make us </span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">too excited, </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">though we wish to remain optimistic</span><span class="A0"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">.</span></span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Cosmetic reforms will bring no real change if the basic structure of power and </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">repressive state apparatus </span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;">remains intact. </span><span class="A0"><span style="font-size: 100%;">When the euphoria settles down,</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Egypt</span></st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-size: 100%;"> will have to counter the uphill task to define and shape its future. There are difficult days ahead for this beautiful country.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><i>Image Courtesy:</i> <span class="A0">time.com</span></span></div>
shubhohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10661646608744489943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5663481787979786545.post-60261726711914043902011-02-06T18:20:00.017+05:302011-03-13T16:22:57.093+05:30Who are the Harmads of Bengal?<div align="justify" class="separator" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPaQyNPX3q8r6lzpk1KLbEWVz7Zw8ZrWzo-NfeTw6vF-vor8LwLI1LZWs5aw5DuOEblkqdNlbEIyCxCAZWpXk_tLAYoIdt0pp16BUQd1AX8T6wCy5EfJYWhucXvIy-jJu0aMKIdLlxJ5w/s400/Mamata-Chatradhar+meeting+in+Lalgarh+on+4th+Feb.2009.JPG" width="300" /></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">When a joint forces team raided and arrested two suspected Maoists – Amiya and Asim Mahato from the Municipal Guest House in Midnapore town, Trinamool Congress chieftain and railway minister Mamata Banerjee rushed at the spot with “friendly’’ television units and swung into damage control mode. Banerjee’s quick reaction does not need much explanation. The guest house was run by her party with the Congress as a relief camp to “shelter” party workers who are on the run from CPI(M) cadres “reclaiming” lost ground in various parts of West Midnapore district. According to Midnapore police chief Manoj Verma, the “sheltered Trinamool workers” comprises many hardcore Maoists and PCAPA activists from the Jangalmahal area. His team was keeping a keen watch on the guesthouse for a long time and the raid took place only after they became definite that seven Maoists had been staying there. Eight letters of CPI(Maoist) politbureau member Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji, senior Maoist leader Asim Ghosh alias Akash and Jharkhand Maoist leader Ranjan Munda has been seized from the two arrested suspects. One of Kishenji’s letters was addressed to the boisterous and bleeding-heart Trinamool MP Kabir Suman. The police have also informed that Amiya Mahato was present with Maoist commander Sidhu Soren when the faction encountered with the joint forces and lost eight of their members including Soren. Asim Mahato acted as Kishenji’s courier. The duo was hiding in the guesthouse since September 2010 with other Maoists including Kanchandeb Sinha, who was arrested on November 2010, from Trinamool block president Nepal Singh’s car in Shalboni. They have also participated in the recent Trinamool-PCAPA rally at Lalgarh. The joint forces team faced stiff resistance from local Trinamool men and women who had tried to prevent them from raiding the den for a second time. Six journalists suffered injuries when the police baton charged the mob to control the pandemonium. The police force has failed to nab the other suspected Maoists who have fled the den after breaking a window at the back of the building. (</span><i><a href="http://www.telegraphindia.com/archives/archive.html"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">)<a name='more'></a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 100%;">For quite a long time, Mamata Banerjee and her friends have mounted a shrill and systematic furor about CPI(M) sponsored “atrocities”. To slander the Marxist cadres, an obscure term “Harmad” was introduced in the Bengali lexicon. But after failing to influence the Center to advance the assembly elections or coerce the Union home minister to withdraw the central forces deployed in Bengal, a frustrated Trinamool chieftain, preoccupied by her reverie to capture the Bengal throne, deployed the few remaining choices from her kitty to prolong a murky political strategy till the elections.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Along with a section of the Bengali media which in recent times has opted for a shamelessly prejudiced role, she had employed a paltry group of Trinamool affiliated intellectuals to publicize the issue as loudly as possible. Recently the same group were spoon-fed and sent to meet the President and Prime Minister at the capital to raise the Harmad issue at the national level. At the same time, the Trinamool cliques covertly forged a tangible nexus with the Maoists, using their bloodthirsty operating procedure to spread terror in the villages where the Left foothold is traditionally rooted deep. Coalition compulsions at the Center enforced home minister P. Chidambaram to send a controversial letter to chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. The letter described Left cadres as Harmad, which prompted the chief minister to take strong objection to the usage. Till the Midnapore arrests happened, repeated allegations raised by the Left parties about a clear nexus between the Trinamool and the Maoists was not sounding credible enough as the media was more focused to dig up “Harmad camps” from distant village hamlets. From a shrewd assessment of the situation, Mamata Banerjee has correctly anticipated that the arrests of Amiya and Asim Mahato carry enough substances to jeopardize her meticulously crafted political game.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Before the Midnapore guest-house arrests, anti-Left opposition forces in and around the state was making relentless accusations against the feeble state administration which according to them is totally incapable of controlling the Maoists menace and the daily bloodshed in three districts – West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura. This tactic has backfired after the administration has started taking positive steps, raiding the dens and arresting many of the culprits. The same voices have now altered their claims and start accusing the government for selectively picking up Trinamool workers after labeling them as Maoists. Recently when the joint forces went to arrest the younger brother of a Trinamool block secretary in Nayagram near Lalgarh for alleged Maoist link, they were confronted by stone hurling Trinamool supporters. The unruly mob subsequently attacked the local the police station in protest of the raid and seriously injuring three police personnel, including an assistant sub-inspector. (</span><i><a href="http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110202/jsp/bengal/story_13524372.jsp"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">) Mamata Banerjee has already started to claim that “cadres wearing CRPF uniforms and police had jointly raided” the guest-house and has accused the CPI(M) of “spreading lies and resorting to character assassination”. Trinamool Congress members took out a rally in Midnapore town wearing black badges in protest of the arrests. Following the Trinamool recipe, grass-eater intellectual cronies and pet media units have started a tantrum on the same line. </span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="center"><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">***</span></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">The “cute” Muslim Trinamool MP Kabir Suman, Mamata Banerjee’s prized catch during the Singur-Nandigram unrest was basically a Maoist plant in the Trinamool bandwagon. Within a year after his famous victory in the parliament elections, Kabir Suman’s sugary voice turned into bitter music to Mamata Banerjee's ears after he publicly went against his leader and party saying that the party is full of petty and corrupt leaders. Feeling stifled in an atmosphere where his only function has been reduced to signing papers sitting at home for his MPLAD funds, Suman had even announced resigning from the party. It took noted writer-activist Mahasweta Devi to meditate and shush Suman’s characteristic verboseness as the able lady, whom Mamata Banerjee had dedicated her party’s impressive parliament elections victory, had felt that the dispute will only help the CPI(M) and jeopardize their combined dream to dethrone the Left Front. Though Suman obediently backtracked, Mahasweta Devi’s intervention failed to convince a furious Trinamool chieftain. The relations soured extremely after Suman openly went against Operation Green Hunt and eulogized PCAPA leader Chhatradhar Mahato in his song </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Chhatradhar Gaan</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> (Song for Chhatradhar) creating serious embarrassment to the party. The once ferocious anti-CPI(M) crusader was gelded and ditched by the party. He is now a broken man, treated as a liability by his leader whom he once loved to describe as a world-class leader. “Mamata Banerjee is a great leader, a phenomenon. It will take 100 years to understand the phenomenon of Mamata Banerjee,” he commented sarcastically in a recent interview. (</span><i><a href="http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/coffeebs-kabir-suman/392448/"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">) Mounting emotion he also said, “Mamata told me the party will decide what topics I can raise in the Lok Sabha. I was also told to get my speech approved by her. Is she Tagore that I have to show her my writings?” Kabir Suman role in Mamata Banerjee’s sordid play is all but over.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">In his just-released book </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Nishaner nam Tapasi Malik</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> (Tapasi Malik – the name of a symbol) dedicated to Asim Giri, Kishenji and others, Kabir Suman has exposed a direct link between the Trinamool and the Maoists by describing in detail how the two accomplices were collaborating with each other during the Nandigram land agitation. In the book, Suman graphically describes a </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> (Save Farmland Committee) meeting held at the Trinamool headquarters Trinamool Bhavan on 6 November 2007 to discuss on intervention possibilities in Nandigram: “When Asim and I reached there, we found several eminent persons….Those present at the meeting at Trinamul Bhavan included Trinamul leaders Sougata Roy, Sovandeb Chatterjee, PDS leader Samir Putatunda, two activists Raja Sarkhel and Prasun Chatterjee who are presently in jail charged under the draconian UAPA, Bhaskar Gupta and Anup Banerjee of TASAM organisation, Naxalites Purnendu Bose, Pradeep Banerjee and Dola Sen and many others. I was so excited and angry that I could not notice properly who else were there.”</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Sarkhel and Chattopadhyay represented </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Gana Pratirodh Mancha</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">, a Maoist frontal organization and were present at the meeting as Maoists link men. The duo Purnendu Basu and Dola Sen are former Naxalites turned Trinamool consultants. According to Suman, two former IAS officers Debobrata Bandopadhyay and Mostaq Murshed were also were present in that meeting. The gathering was so inspiring that Suman can’t restrain himself from delivering a spirited speech on the necessity of sending Kalashnikov rifles to the Trinamool workers at Nandigram. “I had a few words with Mamata in an adjacent room a while back in the presence of Sunanda Sanyal. Mamata was visibly angry. I told her – After what I saw in Satengabari and the way the CPI(M) is indiscriminately attacking and killing the villagers there, I cannot think about anything else other than armed resistance….” the singer wrote from a rabid revolutionary lust.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Kabir Suman also gave an eye-witness account of another strange meeting arranged on January 2009, just a few months before the “historically significant” parliament elections, at the farm house of painter Shuvaprasanna – Mamata Banerjee’s pet Rasputin. Though he has not disclosed the agenda, discussions or conclusions, the timing and the extraordinary participants of this meeting is strikingly significant. Along with Mamata Banerjee, this informal meeting was attended by the US, British and German Console Generals and BJP leader Tathagata Roy. Suman was also invited at the “historical” gathering to “entertain” the distinguished guests with his activistic music. Suman has claimed in his book that it was in this meeting were Mamata Banerjee “insisted” him to contest the elections, a proposal he eventually agreed to after some initial hesitancy.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="center"><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">***</span></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Information about the Trinamool’s covert tactics of aiding and abetting the Maoists are getting exposed at regular intervals and will go on swelling in the coming days. In July 2010, reports have come out in </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Mail Today</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> about how Mamata Banerjee’s trusted point man Shuvendu Adhikary, the suitable son of rural development minister of state Sisir Adhikari and a MP by his own “right”, had maintained day to day link with Maoist leaders in Nandigram and supplied over 1,000 rounds of ammunition to them. The information came out when the CID was interrogating the arrested Nandigram zonal committee secretary of CPI(Maoist) Madhusudan Mondal alias Narayan. Mondol also disclosed that his party had set up their base in Nandigram in March 2007 and formed the first zonal committee in September 2007 in the presence of Maoist leaders Venkateshwar Reddy alias Telegu Deepak and Sudip Congder alias Kanchan.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Many of our alert and awake intellectuals, artists, academics and social-workers who periodically bake their revolutionary conscience on the Singur-Nandigram oven still loves to mention it as a genuine people’s uprising. But Madhusudan Mondal reveals quite a different story. While the Trinamool Congress was conspicuously setting up the </span><i><span style="font-size: 100%;">Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee</span></i><span style="font-size: 100%;"> (BUPC) along with the Maoists and other likeminded parties consisting of right wingers in disguise of left liberals, nationalists, centrists and the numerous fringe factions from the ultra left to congregate people for a “non-violent movement” against land acquisition, side by side they had also began to arm local Trinamool cadres’ with the help of the Maoists.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Two training camps were covertly organized at the Sonachura Primary School and Sonachura Shitala Mandir were more than fifty BUPC and Trinamool members undertook arms training. The Maoist leaders smuggled in eighteen .315, four .303 caliber rifles and one 9 mm carbine, set up one make-shift arms-manufacturing unit in an abandoned house in Goalpara village near Sonachura and manufactured fifty .315 caliber firearms. The BUPC army was also in possession of twenty claymore mines. Shuvendu Adhikary brought a group of people from Contai who knew how to use arms. After the Nandigram battle was “won” and the CPI(Maoists) decided to withdraw from Nandigram, the unused arms and ammunition were deposited with four Trinamool leaders which the BUPC and Trinamool leaders refused to return. (</span><i><a href="http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/specials/fihworldcup2010/Story/105556/India/trinamool-mp-accused-of-supplying-ammo-to-naxalites.html"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">)</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">In January this year, a faxed statement dated December 31 and signed by regional Maoist leader Bikram was widely published in the national media. “Starting from the Singur movement and Nandigram movement to the Lalgarh movement, we have fought alongside the Trinamool Congress against the police and CPI(M) harmads… Ms. Banerjee had protested against Azad’s killing and deployment of Central forces and we had supported her. Our alliance continues till date,” claimed Bikram who is a member of the CPI(Maoist) Bengal-Jharkhand-Orissa regional committee and in-charge of West Bengal’s Purulia unit. Claiming that “we were together everywhere,” Bikram continued in the statement: “Due to our joint efforts, the demon called CPI(M) is on the back foot in West Bengal ... people want this ... we also want to maintain and strengthen our relationship with Banerjee.” However, he has advised the Trinamool chieftain and Union railways minister to “resign from the anti-people union government and sever links with the Congress” and subsequently cautioned her that otherwise “people will throw away Banerjee’s party.” Conceivably, the beast has started demanding returns from its rider. (</span><i><a href="http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/article1034066.ece"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">)</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="center"><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">***</span></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">After winning the 2006 assembly elections with a landslide, the Marxists of Bengal became too much contented and self-assured. Naively assuming the massive victory as a clear mandate in favor of their industrial policy, the seventh Left Front government under the leadership of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee went on pursuing the policy with too much haste. A ruinous arrogance crept in amongst those in power; party leaders started losing touch with the people. The initial nonchalance exhibited by the state government and the CPI(M) in response to the protests in Singur and Nandigram was a result of that attitude. In fact, both the state government and the party were caught off-guard by the spread and rapidity of the unrest. Even before they recognized the full extent of the problem, a substantial chunk of the rural mass base which was instrumental in keeping them in power since 1977 deserted the Left, particularly in places where the issue of land acquisition had a direct impact on the life and livelihood of the people. A series of administrative blunders committed by the government during the Singur and Nandigram events has also contributed to the downslide. When the enormity of the blunders was properly comprehended, it was all but too late.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">The indiscretion committed by the Left came as an unexpected boon to Mamata Banerjee who was virtually panting on the sidelines after her 2006 election disaster. From Kabir Suman’s voluntary submissions, it is now quite clear that the Trinamool chieftain had also received significant push from certain shady sections. Spearheading massive protests over the issue of forced acquisition of farmland, Mamata Banerjee and her friends were successful to fracture the Left supremacy first in the panchayat elections in 2008 and then in the 2009 parliament elections when the Left Front’s strength was reduced from 35 in 2004, to only 15 of the total 42 seats. The subsequent municipal elections held on May 2010 signaled Trinamool’s growing political momentum in the state after the party inflicted another blow to the ruling Left Front by winning a majority of the municipal bodies.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Clearly, the serious erosion in the Left support base was the direct fallout of an overall failure of the Left parties to convince people on the inclusive nature of their industrial policy and the benefits it will bring to the underprivileged. Analyzing the Left’s debacle, Jadavpur University Professor of English Nilanjana Gupta has rightly pointed out in an article how the Left Front, particularly the CPI(M), became a victim of their own successes of the past after they pursued a capital-led industrialization policy. According to Nilanjana, “…people did not want to see their chief minister as just another state leader desperate for investment and their government as just another pro-capitalist facilitator of the powerful and wealthy industrialists. The Left was supposed to be different.” (</span><i><a href="http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2009/06/3051"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">)</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">But Mamata Banerjee and her cronies knew very well that defeating the Left in the assembly elections is altogether a different ballgame. After the initial shock, the Left will undertake a serious and through introspection, analyze its weaknesses, streamline their organizational laxities, chuck out some of the vices born out of unchallenged power for decades and firmly re-position itself. They are aware that a tough regimented party like the CPI(M) will rapidly overcome the setback suffered in the elections and recover lost ground through thousands of their sincere, selfless and dedicated workers and followers. Simultaneously, the state government will proactively initiate socially oriented populist programs focused solely on the underprivileged, marginalized and minorities. They are also aware that it is truly difficult to sustain the favorable public mood for a longer time as rampant corruption and nepotism will surface almost every day from Trinamool run panchayats and municipalities. The people will also start realizing the emptiness of the railways minister’s numerous phony programs and projects. Within ten months after laying the foundation stone with huge fanfare, the Indian Railways had to put on hold the Rs 860 crore state-of-the-art EMU coach factory at Kanchrapara due to acute fund crunch. (</span><i><a href="http://www.moneylife.in/article/8/13445.html"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">)</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">The first obvious signs of the Left’s turn-around came from the students and teachers. In the ongoing students union elections, CPI(M) students wing Students Federation of India (SFI) has performed remarkably well to win majority of the college unions. The SFI has even grabbed many seats which have been with the Trinamool students wing TMCP for a long time. Till January 20, the SFI has managed to win 150 of the 230 colleges that have gone to the elections which include the prestigious Presidency College which the SFI has won after five years and the hypersensitive Asutosh College – located a stone’s throw away from Mamata Banerjee’s Kolkata home. The SFI has also swept Prabhu Jagadbandhu College in Andul where a second year student and SFI candidate Swapan Koley was thrashed with iron rods and brutally killed by Trinamool goons just before the election. In the District Primary Education Council elections, left-backed candidates won 185 of the 192 seats. The Left bagged most of the seats in South Bengal defeating Trinamool backed candidates where the Left parties had faced a rout in the 2009 parliament elections and retained all the 45 seats in North Bengal. (</span><i><a href="http://www.hindu.com/2010/12/04/stories/2010120458640300.htm"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Source</span></a></i><span style="font-size: 100%;">)</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">These are the key reason behind a worried Trinamool chieftain’s shrill cry to advance the assembly elections and her persistent demand to withdraw the central forces deployed in Bengal. The tricksters of her political advisory board have understood that the most effective way to neutralize the Left workers and ensure a smooth sailing to Writers’ Building is to create an atmosphere of terror in Bengal by triggering bloodbath. The gruesome plan includes selectively annihilating the local level leaders of Left parties in the most brutal way possible. The Maoists came as a handy tool in this regard. In Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand, “friendly” mainstream politicians had found them useful to secure electoral gains. Between May 2009 and January 2011, 366 Left leaders and workers have been butchered in West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura by the Maoists – the real Harmads of Bengal. West Midnapore has borne the maximum brunt of the Maoist attacks due to the dynamic support received by the Maoists from father-son duo Sisir and Shuvendu Adhikari. There are forty state assembly seats in the three districts. Though an absolute stronghold of the Left, the seats are too vital for the Trinamool to ignore.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;"></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />
</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Even when there is nothing much to hide about the Trinamool-Maoist diabolic nexus, pet Trinamool intellectuals are hysterically trying to resist the recent exposures as misleading or outright fictitious. Hailed by a section of the “independent” media for “fighting a battle of the mind that has shaken the Left,” this herbivorous group that includes an adequate proportion of buffoons and cunning opportunists has sensed the damaging ramifications of the Midnapore incidence. As a desperate effort, sharp looking “ideological” questions are thrown at the Left to distract the real issue. The Left is asked – Why are you so bothered about the Trinamool-Maoists nexus? What significance does it carry when the people of Bengal have already made up their minds to vote you out in the coming assembly polls? Should you not instead introspect and try to rectify your atrocious conduct and anti-people policy and programs? In appropriate time, all the questions our cocksure intellectuals are asking will fly back like a boomerang and hit them straight with greater intensity. Till then it will be wise to wait and watch.</span></div>shubhohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10661646608744489943noreply@blogger.com0