राजा का डर – पास्कल

महान फ्रांसीसी दार्शनिक और गणितज्ञ ब्लेज़ पास्कल की पुस्तक पौंसे (Pensees) के एक अनुच्छेद का अनुवाद

राजाओं को आदतन सिपाहियों, नगाड़ों, अफसरों और अन्य चीजों के साथ देखा जाता है जिनसे आदर और डर की भावनाएँ जागृत होती हैं – इस तथ्य का नतीजा यह होता है कि जब कभी-कभी वे अकेले और बिना किसी के साथ पाए जाते हैं, तो उनकी मुखाकृति ही काफी होती है प्रजा में आदर और भय पैदा करने के लिए, क्योंकि हम उनके व्यक्तित्व और परिचारक-वर्ग, जिसके साथ वे साधारणतया जोड़ कर देखे जाते हैं, के बीच मानसिक अंतर नहीं करते। और संसार जो नहीं जानता है कि यह आदत का असर है सोचता है कि यह किसी प्राकृतिक शक्ति से प्राप्त है, तभी तो इस तरह की कहावतें मिलती हैं – “उसके चेहरे पर ही दैविकता की छाप है”।

भेड़िया, भेड़िया: नव-उदारवादी राजतंत्र और उदारवादी वामपंथ

“भेड़िया आया, भेड़िया आया” वाली कहानी याद कीजिए। वह एक बच्चे की कहानी है जो ‘भेड़िया आया, भेड़िया आया” का झूठमूठ शोर मचाकर गाँववासियों को इतना तंग करता है कि जब सचमुच भेड़िये आते हैं तो उसको बचाने कोई नहीं आता। पर वह बच्चा गाँववालों से शायद ज्यादा समझदार था। उसे भेड़िए के आने की संभावना का पता था, वो तो बाकियों की तैयारी की परीक्षा ले रहा था, और बता रहा था कि कुछ करो कि भेड़िए के आने की संभावना ही न रहे। आज देखिए, हर जगह ड्रिल होते हैं, युद्ध की तैयारी, आग से बचने की तैयारी, भूकंप के वक्त आप क्या करेंगे उसके लिए तैयारी — इन सब के लिए ड्रिल होते हैं। शायद वह बच्चा अपने समय से आगे था, और यही उसका दोष था।

हम लोगों की स्थिति कुछ गाँववालों की तरह हो गयी है। असल मे हमारी कहानी उनसे भी ज्यादा हास्यास्पद है और दुखांत भी। भेड़िए के आने का डर तो पूंजीवाद में लगातार रहता है, हमें उसके लिए हमेशा सतर्क रहना चाहिए और तैयारी करनी चाहिए — इस तैयारी में भेड़िए के अवतरित होने की संभावना का भी नाश शामिल है। परंतु जो बच्चे पहले “भेड़िया, भेड़िया” चिल्लाते थे, उन्हें बचकाना बोलकर इतना शर्मसार किया जाता था कि उन्होंने भेड़िया देखना ही बंद कर दिया और प्रौढ़ हो गए। या फिर छिपे भेड़ियों ने उन्हें निगल लिया।

हमने आज के लिए अपने आप को कभी तैयार ही नही किया। आज जब भेड़िये छुट्टा घूम रहे हैं और सड़कों पर उन्ही का राज है तो अब हम हैं जो “भेड़िया, भेड़िया” चिल्लाने के अलावा कुछ नहीं कर पा रहे हैं। भेड़िए भी शातिर हो गए हैं — वे चोगा पहन कर घूमते हैं, ताकि हम चिल्लाएँ नहीं। कभी कभी तो ऐसा हो जाता है कि हम जब “भेड़िया, भेड़िया” चिल्लाने लगते हैं तो कई भेड़िए भी हमारे साथ चिल्लाने लगते हैं — अक्सर देखा गया है कि हमारे बच्चे भी ये सब देखकर “भेड़िया भेड़िया” की जगह मोगली की तरह हू-हूआने लगे हैं।

शायद हालात इतने बुरे नहीं हैं। देखिए हम आप कितना व्यवस्था को गलिया रहे हैं, कुछ हुआ तो नहीं। जहाँ बुरी है स्थिति वहाँ इतना आप कर सकते हैं? ज्यादा दूर जाने की ज़रूरत नहीं है, पूछिए कश्मीरियों से। हममें से कुछ नामदारों को अब ईनामदार बना रही है व्यवस्था, इससे ज्यादा क्या हो रहा है? हमारे लिए नया नेतृत्व और नई राजनीतिक भाषाएँ तैयार हो रही हैं।

अब प्रशांत भूषण के मामले में ही देखिए, उनके पक्ष में तो अटॉर्नी जनरल भी खड़े हैं यानी सत्ता पक्ष भी खड़ा है। अगर आप ध्यान दें तो सत्ता पक्ष बारंबार न्यायालय की अभिजात्य स्वायत्तता पर प्रश्नचिह्न उठाता है। हमारी सारी दलीलें जो आज हम दे रहे हैं उसका इस्तेमाल सत्तापक्ष न्यायपालिका की अभिजात्य स्वायत्तता के खिलाफ मतैक्य विकसित करने में कर रहा है।

हम न्यायपालिका की अभिजात्यता यानी अपने आप को आलोचना से ऊपर मानने की उसकी प्रवृत्ति के खिलाफ बोल रहे हैं, पर हम उसकी पूर्ण स्वायत्तता को बचाना चाहते हैं। हमारा मानना है कि न्यायपालिका सत्तापक्ष के हित में काम कर रही है, और उसके आलोचकों को हतोत्साहित कर रही है। जबकि ऐसा होना नहीं चाहिए।

दूसरी तरफ, सत्तापक्ष भी न्यायपालिका की अभिजात्यता पर प्रश्न चिह्न उठाता है ताकि न्यायपालिका अपने आपको शासन की तात्कालिक और गतिमान आवश्यकताओं के दायरे में सीमित रखे। इसीलिए न्यायाधीशों की बहाली का अधिकार सत्तापक्ष अपने हाथ मे रखना चाहता है। हम जो माहौल तैयार कर रहे हैं उसका इस्तेमाल सत्तापक्ष न्यायपालिका की स्वायत्तता को सापेक्ष अथवा सीमित करने में करेगा।

न्यायिक अभिजात्यता न्यायिक स्वायत्तता का नतीजा है। पर यह स्वायत्तता पूंजीवादी राजसत्ता की संरचना से पैदा होती है। वर्ग विभाजित समाज की वह देन है जिसके तहत सामाजिक अनुबंध और शांति बनाए रखने के लिए स्वायत्त संस्थाओं की ज़रूरत होती है। परंतु आज नव-उदारवाद के दौर में पूंजीवादी राजसत्ताओं को इस तरह के अनुबंध और शांति बनाए रखने के लिए लगातार विधि-विधान में बदलाव की ज़रूरत पड़ रही है, जिसमें सांस्थानिक स्वायत्तता पूर्ण क्या सापेक्ष भी बनाए रखने में दिक्कत हो रही है।

यह राजसत्ता के निरंतर संकट का दौर है — ऐसा नहीं है कि वह शांति और स्वायत्तता बनाए नहीं रखना चाहती, परंतु उसके लिए स्थायित्व चाहिए। भूमंडलीय पूंजीवादी विकास की धारा राष्ट्रीय स्तर पर स्थायित्व बरकरार रहने नहीं दे रही है। जब सहमति नहीं तो राजसत्ता का आदिमाधार प्रपीड़न काम आता है। और हमारे देश में यही हो रहा है। सत्ताएँ ऐसी सरकारें ला रही हैं जो संकटग्रस्त माहौल में जागती उत्कंठाओं को लामबंध कर उनकी व्यवस्था-विरोधी प्रवृत्ति को कुंद कर व्यवस्थापरक बना दे। आज हमारे साथ भी ऐसा ही हो रहा है — हम व्यवस्था के भूत के संरक्षक हो गए हैं।

सत्ता पक्ष हमारी विडंबना को जानता है — नहीं बोलने में भी नुक़सान है, बोलने में भी नुक़सान है। क्योंकि बोलने के दायरे में ही आज विपक्षवादी राजनीति सिमट गई है — समस्या वहां है। यथास्थिति के तहत समाधान खोजने की यह विडंबना है। हमारी पूरी राजनीति मतचर्चा में सिमट जाती है, संरचनात्मक प्रश्नों पर व्यवहार की गुंजाइश नहीं रहती।

व्यवस्था विपक्ष अथवा वामपंथ को खत्म नहीं कर रही, उन्हें उपयोगी बना रही है। खत्म होने का डर हमें व्यवस्थापरक रूप में उपयोगी बनाता है क्योंकि उस डर के अलग-अलग दर के मुताबिक हम सामाजिक उत्कंठाओं के विभिन्न स्तरों को तात्कालिक अभिव्यक्ति देकर तुष्ट कर देते हैं। अलग-अलग ब्रांड के पक्ष और विपक्ष का व्यस्थापरक उपयोग यही है। नरम से गरम तक, सभी को इस प्रक्रिया में रोज़गार मिलता है — कोई खाली हाथ नहीं रहता। राजनीति का नव-उदारीकरण है ये।

हाँ, ये ज़रूर है कि अब अगर व्यवस्था सचमुच मारने पर उतरेगी तो हम इतने नंगे हो चुके हैं कि कोई खोह नही मिलेगा छुपने को — और ये सब हमारी तथाकथित “सक्रियता” से हुआ है। ये है व्यवस्था का कमाल, जिसका हम भंडाफोड़ करने चले थे।

कहाँ पर क्या, कितना बोलना है, अभिव्यक्ति की संरचना बिल्कुल घालमेल हो गई है — आलाप, विलाप, संलाप सब कर्कश एकालाप हो गए हैं। तात्कालिक अभिव्यक्ति और प्रसारण की सुविधा ने हमारे अंदर हमारी राजनीतिक सामाजिक उपस्थिति का स्फीत भाव (inflated sense) पैदा कर दिया है — जिसका पैमाना फ्रेंड लिस्ट, इमोजी और अंगूठे की गिनती से तय होता है।

प्रसिद्ध मीडिया दार्शनिक मार्शल मैक्लुहान ने संदेश पर मीडिया की संरचना के असर को समझ कर ही दो तरह से मीडिया को परिभाषित किया था — “मीडिया इज़ मेसेज” (मीडिया संदेश है) और “मीडिया इज़ मसाज” (मीडिया मालिश है)। यही परिभाषाएँ सोशल मीडिया के लिए भी सटीक हैं। जिस तरह की प्रतिक्रियात्मकता और भाषा की एकरूपता सोशल मीडिया प्लेटफार्म पर दिखती है, और जिस तरह से वे हमारे अंदर उपस्थिति की स्फीत भावना जागृत करती है उसके लिए यह बिल्कुल ही सही है — सोशल मीडिया सामाजिक मालिश है। इसके हमाम में हम सब नंगे हैं और एक दूसरे की मालिश में लगे हैं। ध्यान रहे, मालिश में केवल सहलाना नहीं होता, चोट भी लगती है।

हालांकि प्रतिक्रिया प्राकृतिक नियम है, और प्राकृतिक स्थायित्व के लिए यह ज़रूरी है, समाज और राजनीति में तात्कालिक (इमीडिएट) प्रतिक्रिया यथास्थिति बनाए रखने का साधन मात्र है — व्यवस्थापरक अथवा वर्चस्वीय राजनीतिक क्रिया की वह पूरक है। वह विपक्षीय राजनीति की सीमा दिखाती है।

शायद मार्क्स क्रांतिकारियों को “ओल्ड मोल” (प्राचीन छछूंदर) इसीलिए कहते थे — जो व्यवस्था के अंतर्विरोधों को तीव्र करता हुआ, उसकी नींव को ही खोखला कर देता है, वह सतही तात्कालिकता की क्षणभंगुरता में बहता नहीं है। उसके स्पेक्टेकल की चकाचौंध में अपने आप को बेनकाब नहीं करता है। और यह काम “तात्कालिक” प्रतिनिधत्ववादियों की “खुली” राजनीति से बिल्कुल भिन्न है। इनकी राजनीति तात्कालिकता में शोषितों की व्यवस्था-विरोधी ऊर्जा को तीन-तेरह करने का साधन मात्र बन जाती है। इस अर्थ में प्रतिक्रयात्मक राजनीति को प्रतिक्रियावादी बनने में देर नही लगती और इसी रूप में वह व्यवस्थापरक क्रिया की पूरक है, वह उसी में जड़ित रहती है।

आंतोनियो ग्राम्शी के मुताबिक बुद्धिजीवी दो प्रकार के होते हैं। उनके अनुसार जैविक बुद्धिजीवियों और पारंपरिक बुद्धिजीवियों में अंतर होता है। जैविक बुद्धिजीवी किसी न किसी सामाजिक वर्ग से सीधे और मूलतः सचेतन तौर पर जुड़े होते हैं। पारंपरिक बुद्धिजीवी, वर्गीय समाज के उत्पाद होते हुए भी अपने आप को वर्गो और उनके आपसी संघर्षों से परे और ऊपर मानते हैं।

हम “सार्वजनिक बुद्धिजीवियों” को ग्राम्शी के इस पारिभाषिक विभेद में कहां रखेंगे?

मुझे लगता है कि भारत और विश्व मे बुद्धिजीवियों के लिए जो आज संकट पैदा हुआ है वह उनकी स्वच्छंदता के विरोधाभासी गुण से पैदा हुआ संकट है। यह संकट बुद्धिजीवियो की वाचाल सार्वजनिकता और वर्गोपरि भ्रम का है। सार्वजनिक बुद्धि की यह स्वच्छंदता पूंजीवाद में राजसत्ता के वर्गीय आधार से उसकी भ्रामक सापेक्ष स्वायत्तता की देन है। सार्वजनिक बुद्धि का स्वच्छंद बाज़ार पूंजीवाद की आरंभिक राजनीतिक आत्मा — “स्वतंत्रता, समानता, भाईचारा” — को वैचारिक स्तर पर संजोता है, जिससे कि पूंजी का वैचारिक वर्चस्व बना रहे और उसके असली अर्थ को पैजामा पहनाया जा सके।

पूंजीवाद की नवउदारवादी अवस्था मे पत्रकारिता और प्रकाशन के उद्योग की मदद से सार्वजनिक बुद्धि की स्वच्छन्दता का गहन बाजार पनपता है। परंतु नतीजा यह है कि इस अवस्था के संकट में सब से पहले इन्हीं सार्वजनिक बुद्धिजीवियों पर गाज़ गिरती है — उन्हें अपना वर्गीय आधार तय करना होता है। उनकी सार्वजनिकता और वाचालता उन्हें तानाशाही सत्ता के लिए आसान निशाना बना देती हैं। सत्ता उनकी इस दुर्दशा का इस्तेमाल प्रतिरोध के स्वरों को दबाने के लिए और व्यवस्था की शक्तियों को बटोर कर उसे सुदृढ़ करने के लिए करती है। सार्वजनिक बुद्धिजीवी जवाबी वर्चस्वकारी वर्गीय जैविकता को उभरने से रोकते हैं। बड़े नामों के बचाव में जो वामपंथ और उदारवाद का गठजोड़ पैदा होता है वो “सबाल्टर्न” शक्तियों की रणनीतिक निरंतरता और सुगढ़ता के लिए दिक्कतें पैदा करता है।

फासीवाद का कम्युनिटी ट्रांसमिशन

सर्वहाराकरण की तेज होती प्रक्रिया के कारण उभरतीं दमित उत्कंठाओं को फासीवाद इस रूप में अभिव्यक्ति देकर संघटित करता है कि वे उन सामाजिक-आर्थिक और संपत्ति संबंधों के लिए खतरा न बन पाएँ जो उस प्रक्रिया और उसकी उत्कंठाओं को जन्म देते हैं । फासीवाद उन उत्कंठाओं को उनके तात्कालिक प्रतिक्रियात्मक स्तर और रूप में ही व्यक्त करने का साधन प्रदान करता है, ताकि राजनीतिकता और आर्थिकता के पार्थक्य से जो राजसत्ता पैदा होती है उसक़े पुनरुत्पादन में आम रोष के कारण रोध पैदा न हो सके। नवउदारवादी अर्थतन्त्रीय अवस्था – पूंजी के वित्तीयकरण, उत्पादन के सूचनाकरण और श्रम के अनौपचारीकरण – ने फासीवाद के इस गुण को अलग स्तर पर पहुँचा दिया है, उसको तीव्रता और व्यापकता दे दी है। अब फासीकरण (fascisation) के साधन के लिए खुली राजनीतिक तानाशाही केवल एक आपातकालिक विकल्प है। फासीवाद आज सामाजिक प्रक्रिया का रूप धारण कर पूंजीवाद की वर्तमान अवस्था की दैनिक सामाजिकता और प्रतिनिधत्ववादी औपचारिक जनतंत्र की आंतरिकता में समाहित हो गई है। और इस प्रक्रिया के चलन और संचालन के लिए अब फासीवादियों की ज़रूरत नहीं है। कोरोना के वक्त की भाषा में बोलें तो फासीवाद का आज कम्युनिटी ट्रांसमिशन हो गया है।

Capitalism and Social Justice: The Floyd Protests in the US

In 1968, when Europe was witnessing student revolts, Italian Marxist filmmaker, novelist and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote a poem addressing students, where he unabashedly told them,

When yesterday at Valle Giulia you fought
with policemen,
I sympathized with the policemen!

He went on to explain that these boys in the police came from poor families and were dehumanised by the system —

…Worst of all, naturally,
is the psychological state to which they are reduced
(for roughly sixty dollars a month);
with a smile no longer,
with friends in the world no longer,
separated,
excluded (in an exclusion which is without equal);
humiliated by the loss of the qualities of men
for those of policemen (being hated generates hatred).

Pasolini tauntingly challenged the students,

We obviously agree against the police as institution.
But get mad at the Legal System and you will see! [1]

The Defunding of Police: What does it signify?

In the context of the ongoing movement against police violence in the US, the proposal for defunding and disbanding the police force has gained a wide currency. It has enthused many towards a more libertarian future. Its influence has also reached the learned sections of the left and liberal circles in India. As in 1968 and some years after it, today once again we see a confluence between those who stress on the virtues of a lean state and those demanding social justice, trying to give meanings or definite agenda to the movement —binding it to concrete demands. As David Harvey has shown, the intellectual force and initial consensus for neoliberalism were derived from such confluence.[2] However, neither in the case of the 1968 upsurge nor today can one reduce a whole movement to these vocal agencies who are there to negotiate with the system — in the case of the Floyd protests, to bring in police reforms and the Democrats to commit for them, while blaming Trump for everything.

It is interesting to see the complementarity of Trump and his right-wing bandwagon, on the one hand, and the left-liberals, on the other. The former sees the conspiracy of anarchists, communists and anti-capitalism everywhere, destroying American values and institutions; therefore, they stress on violent incidents that have happened during the upsurge. The liberals and left see in the protests the assertion of American values rescuing institutions from their takeover by conservative and even fascist elements. They downplay violence and sometimes even blame rightwingers for infiltration. Hence, in both discourses American values and basic institutions remain sacrosanct.

Even the apparently radical suggestion to defund and even disband the police is perhaps not very drastic. With the growing numbers of private security agencies and the localised community-level management of their engagement, the state run formal police force is increasingly becoming obsolete. Two prominent journalists-cum-business experts, while writing in Business Insider, applauded police-free Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and found Trump’s accusation that such zones are anarchistic to be unwarranted and “a wrong response”. They go on to say,

“Whether you believe in the Black Lives Matter cause or not, you should want this test to continue. If the Floyd protests have shown us anything, it’s that America needs new models for law enforcement, regulation, and community organising. CHAZ is one tiny demonstration. We can think of tons of experiments worth trying: no-armed-police zones, no-police-car zones, an-officer-on-every-corner zones… Let’s try ‘em all. May there be 1,000 more CHAZzes!”[3, emphasis mine]

Disbanding the police force is a wonderful idea, but what does it mean to implement this idea in an unequal system? Isn’t policing an intrinsic need of such a system? Is this system itself being questioned, or is it just an anger against a particular “alienated” form of policing? Empowering people without destroying the internal hierarchy in a community will only allow those on top to accumulate more power. Disbanding police in this scenario will force the community to internalise policing, and the powerful will play the judge. Power always clings to the powerful, who in turn are only personifications of power. That is why you see no significant outrage at such “radical” proposals in the US, except from the supporters of Trump, and Fox News. But what we see most of the time, if not always, depends on the perspective that we take, which in turn is dependent on our location relative to various socio-cultural (superstructural) asperities that break open whenever there is a heightening of structural stress energy in capitalist class relations. Hence, the relevant question would be whether the Floyd Protests are merely about different demands that are being posed, or whether something more is happening in the American society that we need to understand.

Capitalism is ever ready to recompose itself according to the crisis that a social movement poses. Reducing a movement to its immediate demands is one of the main ways that contribute to this recomposition. The demands are crucial to organise the movement, but reducing the latter to the literality of the former is not just ludicrous, but a serious reduction that reifies demands and is a result of commodity fetishism — of reducing social relations to thingness, which helps in capitalist reproduction not just in ideology, but also materially. It is through this reduction that the legitimation of a capitalist state, as the chief arbitrator of the system, is derived. But a movement is definitely more than its demands, it is about social relations. What is happening in the US is not simply a reaction to an incident, rather it is the eventalisation of that incident exposing the ab-normalcy of those relations.

The Political Economy of Policing and the Floyd Protests

It seems corporate America has found “a public relations windfall” in the Floyd protests. Many delivery-based firms, like Amazon, Instacart, GrubHub among others, who have been crucial agencies of commodity circulation during the ongoing pandemic, were engulfed in labour conflicts. They found a respite in the protests, as “corporate anti-racism is the perfect egress from these labor conflicts. Black lives matter to the front office, as long as they don’t demand a living wage, personal protective equipment and quality health care.”[4] However, these spectacular protests could not be reduced to militant black liberal demands of Black Lives Matter, foremostly because the problems of policing themselves could not be understood simply from the perspective of race.

Racial disparity is an important description of inequalities that characterise the American society. The statistical significance of this phenomenon can hardly be overstated in describing police violence and incarceration in the US. However, it is not self-explanatory, it is linked to the deeper political economic processes.

“What the pattern in those states with high rates of police killings suggests is what might have been the focal point of critical discussion of police violence all along, that it is the product of an approach to policing that emerges from an imperative to contain and suppress the pockets of economically marginal and sub-employed working class populations produced by revanchist capitalism.“[5, emphasis mine]

In the Marxist framework, “the uncertainty and irregularity of employment, the constant return and long duration of gluts of labour are all symptoms of a relative surplus population.”[6] The growing number of marginalised sub-employed segments of the working class are what constitute today the relative surplus population and its various types: Floating, Latent, Stagnant and “the sphere of pauperism…the hospital of the active labour-army and the dead weight of the industrial reserve army.”[7] This ever growing population must be harnessed for capitalist accumulation, to obtain cheap labour and to cheapen existing labour. Yet it is a dangerous disruptive force when not engaged productively in an immediate manner. The increase in police violence is perhaps evidence of an increased self-activity of this population. A proper regime of incarceration and policing is needed to contain, suppress and productivise its energy.

In fact, Ruth Gilmore in her book, Golden Gulag, shows “how resolutions of surplus land, capital, labor, and state capacity congealed into prisons.” The “phenomenal growth of California’s state prison system since 1982” can be understood as a part of the resolution to the crisis of the golden age of American capitalism, which was characterised by overaccumulation wanting radical measures like “developing new relationships and new or renovated institutions out of what already exists.” [8] Since the late 1990s, Gilmore along with Angela Davis and others has been involved in the organising efforts against what they call, the Prison-Industrial Complex.[9]

With regard to the Floyd Protests too, it has been observed that among the masses that have emerged on the streets, there are those who have suffered because of the pandemic and being sheltered-in-place “without adequate sustained federal relief.” Therefore, these protests are also a consequence of “mass layoffs, food pantries hard pressed to keep up with unprecedented need, and broad anxiety among many Americans about their bleak employment prospects in the near future.” This can be grasped only if the widespread looting is not rejected, but explained.

Unlike the ghetto rebellions of yesteryears, the composition of the looters today is multiracial and intergenerational, targeting downtowns and central shopping districts. These are “the most dispossessed of all races and ethnicities who are the most likely to be routinely surveilled, harassed, arrested, convicted, incarcerated and condemned as failures, the collateral damage of the American dream.”[10] The law-preserving and law-constituting forces can understand only the language of demands, and the surplus-ed do not demand, but act.

Beyond Neoliberal Social Justice

The hegemonic tendency in the American anti-racist movement today “accepts the premise of neoliberal social justice”. It has emerged as “the left wing of neoliberalism [whose] sole metric of social justice is opposition to disparity in the distribution of goods and bads in the society, an ideal that naturalizes the outcomes of capitalist market forces so long as they are equitable along racial (and other identitarian) lines.”[11] This provides a crucial clue to understand not just the limits of the movements for representation, recognition and redistribution, but also the compatibility of social justice with neoliberalism. This can help in making sense of why in some countries, like India, policies and laws towards ensuring social justice frequently accompanied the aggressive implementation of neoliberal economic reforms.

The history of capitalism shows that it includes through differentiation and segmentation, constituting the unevenness of its social geography, which is a crucial factor in the dynamics of capitalist accumulation. It is this differential inclusion that structures the extension and intensification of division of labour, facilitating the circulation of commodities and capital and ensuring the transfer of value. This aspect of capitalist development manifests itself in real identitarian inequalities, insecurities, anxieties and politics at diverse levels of social structures. Social differentiation, obviously, in effect preempts or defers the emergence of class-against-capital that threatens not just law and order, but the very system that they conserve. Simplistically put, identities are all about horizontal divisions and vertical (re)integration. This engenders a perspective that does not allow various segments to think beyond redistributive economics and the politics of representation and recognition. So all social conflicts become just problems of management, engineering, and of statistics. Hence, tweaking specific variables is what needs to be done. Blaming individuals or even specific institutions for what is an endemic problem of the system is the best way to salvage the system. This is how today, as Pasolini would put, people everywhere (differentially, but definitely) “belong to a ‘totality’ (the ‘semantic fields’ on which they express themselves through both linguistic and nonlinguistic communication).” This is how “bourgeois entropy” is reached, when “the bourgeoisie is becoming the human condition. Those who are born into this entropy cannot in any way, metaphysically, be outside of it. It’s over.”[12] But, is it so?

Can we deny the experience of racism and, for that matter, of any enclosed segment of class? Aren’t such experiences crucial to the politics of class? While it is true that racism cannot be understood in its own terms, and all problems faced by black proletarians cannot be reduced to racism, can we deny that class always appears through such specific geo-cultural forms of social relations? The sedimental reality of all these forms is, of course, the dynamics of class relations and struggle, but these dynamics can only be captured in the experience of these forms. The struggle against segmentation is not to wish it away. Any unity based on such ideological wishing away of inter-segmental conflicts will be external and an imposition.

An identity assertion becomes revolutionary when it is a ground for negating the very logic of differentiation and segmentation that sustains capitalist accumulation through competition and hierarchy. Then, the assertion is not for identitarian accommodation, but against the logic of identification—to envisage a non-identity against and beyond all identities. The positive assertion of identities, on the other hand, is for accommodation within power and accumulation of power —this is what social justice means within the logic of capital. However, any assertion of oppressed identities always contains the possibility of the release of an anti-identitarian subject, the class of proletarians, that goes against racism, casteism and other segmentations to destroy the stability of the very system of classification and gradation of labourers that sustains capitalism. It is this subject that can be traced in the incidents of looting and arson in the Floyd protests. Since they serve no means, they are ignored by those who don’t decry them.

Note: My special thanks to Arvind, Lalan, Nilotpal, Paresh, Prakash, Pritha and Satyabrat for innumerable discussions on the article.

References

[1] Il PCI ai Giovani (The PCI to the Young), in Pier Paolo Pasolini. 1972 [2005]. Heretical Empiricism. Tr. Ben Lawton & Louise K. Barnett, New Academia Publishing, pp 150-158.

[2] David Harvey. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. (Chapter 2, ‘The Construction of Consent’).

[3] David Plotz & Henry Blodget. 2020. ‘We need more experiments like Seattle’s police-free’, Business Insider (June 13, 2020). Accessed on June 15, 2020.

[4] Cedric Johnson. 2020. ‘The Triumph of Black Lives Matter and Neoliberal Redemption’, nonsite.org (Posted June 9, 2020). Accessed on June 15, 2020.

[5] Adolph Reed, Jr. 2016. ‘How Racial Disparity Does Not Help Make Sense of Patterns of Police Violence’, nonsite.org (Reposted June 9, 2020). Accessed on June 15, 2020.

[6] Karl Marx. 1976. Capital. Volume 1, (Trans. Ben Fowkes). London: Pelican Books, p. 866.

[7] Ibid, p. 797.

[8] Ruth Wilson Gilmore. 2007. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis and Opposition in Globalizing California. University of California Press, p. 28.

[9] Critical Resistance Publications Collective, ed. 2000. Critical Resistance to the Prison-Industrial Complex. Special Issue of Social Justice 27(3).

[10]Johnson, op. cit.

[11] Reed, op. cit.

[12] Pasolini, op. cit., p. 156.

On the generalisation of reactionary politics

1. When we talk about reactionary politics, it is always in contrast to “progressive” politics. So this is about a contest, a competition, where purportedly progressive energy within the system can be mobilised to tame reaction. Evidently, this duel is a sort of Newtonian mechanics of action and reaction, which stabilises the system, the machine. Till recently, the contrast between these two poles of politics was stark and a distinct progressivist political programme could really be charted out.

2. However, in recent times, the machinic and intrinsic fatalism of state and polity, about which Marxists have always talked, but very few of them have been able to make this critique a consistent ground of their politics and analysis, has gripped the societal energy into the mire of barbaric inertia. No political breakthrough is visible on the horizon. Hence, it is time when we must stop talking about reactionary politics, and start talking about reaction as the general condition of politics – about the reactionary political structure or reactionary polity. The digits in which the “contest” is taking place are themselves reactionary. Reaction which was the result has become the means of politics. Reactionary polity with its discourse of reactivity is what binds left, right and centre together to (re)form itself. We are simply responding to the systemic machinery. The machinic system has realised itself in its fullness – this constitutes the polity itself.

3. The Asimovian utopia or rather dystopia has been realised – humanics and robotics have been integrated. Our general intellect alienated from us has gained a full life-form and we have been robotised.

“As soon as humanity in the abstract is introduced, the Laws of Robotics begin to merge with the Laws of Humanics.”

“Since emotions are few and reasons are many, the behavior of a crowd can be more easily predicted than the behavior of one person can.”

The machine has reduced us to a mere crowd with a few emotions, hence predictable and manageable. Our innumerable grievances are summarised into a set of emotive reactions.

(To be continued)

The Taming of the Shrew: India’s Left in the 2019 Elections

“…the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?”
– Bertolt Brecht

“Procrustes, or the Stretcher …had an iron bedstead, on which he used to tie all travellers who fell into his hands. If they were shorter than the bed, he stretched their limbs to make them fit it; if they were longer than the bed, he lopped off a portion. Theseus served him as he had served others.”
– Bulfinch’s Mythology

1. Elections are procrustean rituals in an institutionalised democracy to contain and channel the social (over)flow and productivise it to manufacture a government and its legitimacy. By recursive re-discretisation of the social flow into manageable units, the citizenry is recomposed. In these elections, it is not the public that elects the government but the state that reassembles the public to produce the government. This reconstituted public gets the government that it deserves.

2. In the elections of 2019, against the right wing politics of communal polarisation, the left liberals in India have been seeking to pose a different sort of polarisation. Either you are on this side or that side. It doesn’t matter even if some who are on this side, earlier they were on the other and next time again they may fall there, whenever the juggling of elections happens and post-electoral alliances are made. For them, the poles are poles, stuck to the ground.

3. Hence, there is more to the 2019 elections for our nationalist left liberals. As they themselves say, it is a historic moment. And it is indeed something historic that liberal manichaeism seeks to achieve. If BJP is, what they say, a fascist party, then the liberals are imagining something unique in these elections – of defeating fascists in the elections. The fascist regimes, classically, might have come through elections, but have never been eliminated in them.

4. Now, the only strategy that seems to achieve this is by ensuring that votes are not divided (for which a Manichean binary is necessary). Marx’s dictum that all such phrases of not splitting votes and that the reactionaries might win because of the split are meant to dupe the proletariat seems outdated for the doomsday New Left. They want to defeat neoliberal authoritarianism through the procrusteanism of liberal democracy, while the right seeks to synchronise them.

5. However, by posing and making these elections as a two party contest, our marginalised left liberals are binding themselves to the dangerous game of attracting the median voter. In a bipolar contest the result is a more and more identity of opposites. And when much of the opposition is already centred on non-oppositional disagreements rather than based on any principled opposition, the difference is internal. You are but an image of your opponent.

6. They identify the hindutva brigade as a fascist pole, against which they want to see everyone else together. However, this ideal has never been realised, perhaps fortunately for the benefit of the left liberals themselves. The divided regional forces whether in NDA or outside are the only respite against homogenised authoritarianism in the country. From within liberal democracy, the intensification of regionalist localism, along with institutionalised parliamentarianism are the only safeguards left against the hindutva brigade. This is what left liberals don’t realise when they indulge in their anti-fascist rhetoric. Anyway, with this rhetoric they don’t impress anyone but themselves. The major regional forces whenever they take up this rhetoric seriously, they use it merely as a bargaining chip against centrism.

7. The right wing forces have been the main agencies to recompose the relationship between state and civil society across the globe – of combining authoritarianism with liberal democracy. Only by a complete profanation of institutions that emerged in earlier regimes of accumulation that capital can reproduce the state in the neoliberal conjuncture. The barriers must be broken time and again to refinancialise the social factory – the neat divisions between different socio-economic spheres, between productive and reproductive regimes are obsolete and costly. These barriers that managed the surplus/ superfluous population through much-acclaimed welfarism are not required now – they must integrate to form a continuous reserve army. The desacralisation of liberal social-administrative spheres is part of this process. In recent years the right wing attack that directly concerned the left liberals has been in academia. The academia is increasingly made market friendly, not allowing any section of population to take perpetual “study leave”. It is not the quality that matters but quantity – production for production’s sake. Ultimately all of us produce data, and are data ourselves.

8. The left in the name of defending the “gains” is caught up in a contradictory position of defending the status quo. The right-wing forces, on the other, by attacking those gains show far more clear understanding of the contradictions that they expose. They defend the status quo by eliminating those contradictions and expose the brutal structure in its naked form. But this naked coercion would need a new regime of legitimation, because a long-term overexposure of its coercive apparatus can be a doom for the whole system. One of the gains of the right wing onslaught is to regiment the progressive forces and make them complicit in preserving the status quo, by bringing legitimation back to the structure. The cover-up of gains and incremental progress provides the structure a long life. ‘Defending the gains’ doesn’t always need to be a defence of the socio-administrative structure that provisioned those gains. They can be a ground to recognise, expand and generate more cracks in the structure, and create more crises for its reproduction. And in this negation develops a new grammar of social relations. But for left liberals there is no alternative (TINA) – Liberal democracy or Fascism!

9. In an interview to New Left Review in 1975, Communist thinker and leader K Damodaran lamented the failure of Indian left to differentiate between state and government, and hence, their inability to understand their relationship too. There are some who confuse between state and government to pose the impossibility of immediate political actions and there are others who find this confusion very productive, when haloed as the relative autonomy of the state and the political, to justify indulgence in bourgeois polity.

10. In fact, this confusion is one of the means through which the state avoids an overexposure. It is how it camouflages itself in the everydayness of governmentality. The state’s mood fluctuations, given a constant reshuffling in the relationship between the political and the economic, emerge as multiple political fetish-forms, as political forces, and even regimes. You can worship the state in whichever form you like – if nothing suits you, you pronounce it, you will get what you need – a new form! The spirit of state is fathomless and boundless – all political forms, their enthronement, dethronement or re-enthronement combine to constitute “the rhythm of the spirit”. The magic of capitalist state works on only one principle, which Prince Tancredi Falconeri pronounced –

“Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com’è bisogna che tutto cambi” (“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”) – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard (Il Gattopardo)

On Rights Politics and Migrant Workers

These notes were prepared for a discussion in Delhi on a report on the condition of migrant workers in Delhi, Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu (October 6 2017).

REFORMS & REVOLUTION

1. The two significant aspects of demand and right politics are – firstly, they are grounded in the immediate social needs that are framed within a structure. Secondly, they are attempts to establish a discourse with the state machinery – hence they are discursively circumscribed within the field of social relations. Thus, they are necessarily reform oriented, but they need not be reformist. The questions of rights, reforms and demands are unavoidable guerrilla struggles, which build the capacity of workers to organise larger movements. But do these struggles mean deferring the final movement that targets the very structural and superstructural setup that give language to those social needs? No, because they also test the vulnerabilities of the system and can become endeavours to burrow through it the final escape or emancipation. Every moment is a moment for both reform and revolution, and also reaction. When a movement is able to transcend its initial demands, to go on to attack the present social relations and to reorganise them then it becomes revolutionary. When the movement attempts to take the leap, but fails, then reaction happens. When the movement is not ready to take any leap beyond or reneges at the last moment, reform and/or reaction can happen, depending on the level of crisis in the system.

2. However, because the rights politics in itself is concerned with achievements of the rights and demands, at its own level will be geared towards negotiations and bargains, and impressing upon the state machinery, rather than changing the social relations themselves. Even the trade union politics is embedded in this kind of relationship. There is nothing in these forms that makes them question the structure of that relationship between workers and capitalists, or in the former case between workers and the state. The danger of reformism comes from this. But once again, as a conscious part of the larger movement against the structure of present social relations they play a crucial role of waging guerrilla struggles. But what does this signify? Then how do we define the working class politics? Also what will be the organisational question which balances between reform and revolution?

3. When we talk about workers’ politics, it is grounded in the dialectic of competition and collectivity. Marx captured this very aptly, when he said: “Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association.” The politics that is premised upon the segmentation of the workers vs the politics of ever-expanding combination and association, that is grounded in the everyday interaction among workers. The latter is not a mechanical aggregation or unity of isolated workers with similar grievances or demands, but a combination or network that is built in their daily conflict with state and capital. Only an expansion of this network has the capacity to refuse to be subsumed by capital and its network. In this, demands are definitely raised but are incidental. In this framework, demands and rights play the role of testing the system’s vulnerabilities and the organisational strength of the expanding combination.

ON MIGRATION

4. Migration is not just a fact, but also an act. It is not fully incidental that a word for migration in Hindi is पलायन (the more formal word is प्रवास). The former is very rich, often used as a stigma – one of its meaning being running away or an escapist act. In my view, it is this sense that renders the act of migration politically rich. Migration is not just a spatial fix, a response of the weak to the immediate contingencies of life. It is also a rebellious withdrawal, an escape, a long march against “the current state of affairs.” It is an act of refusal, non-acceptance of the lot. As an immediate spatial fix it demonstrates the weak agency of the migrant – a weakness in mastering the system. But it also has a utopian element that makes any human agency restless, that may come one time as an escape, another time as an emancipation, especially when individual weakness becomes a ground for collective subjectivity. Wasn’t this Ambedkar’s intention when he advised dalits to escape villages?

5. Legal Unionism is bound to consider migrant and mobile workers unreliable for their purpose – it simply cannot rely on them. On the other hand, social unionism which seeks to overcome the limits of traditional unionism is caught up in the discourse of non-conflictuality and negotiations with state (which in turn is problematically conceptualised). Hence for this school too it is always about accommodation – creating space for the migrants, not about problematising the whole space itself which is the etatised field of labour-capital relations. Therefore the vagrancy and mobility of proletarians are something to be shed off, not to be made a ground to imagine an overhauling of social relations and ideologies. Hence migrants as migrants are suspects, to be always put in the peripheries of organised politics. But different revolutions have shown how it was mostly settled workers’ organisations, afraid of losing their accumulated privileges, developed petty bourgeois tendencies and were unable to go beyond the legal fights when required, unless workers revolted and autonomously organised themselves.

6. Right from Karl Marx, Marxists have understood the relationship of workers mobility and their political consciousness. Lenin provides an insight into the poltical meaning of migration and demonstrates how to think about workers beyond their victimhood and our philanthropist vanguardism:

“There can be no doubt that dire poverty alone compels people to abandon their native land, and that the capitalists exploit the immigrant workers in the most shameless manner. But only reactionaries can shut their eyes to the progressive significance of this modern migration of nations. Emancipation from the yoke of capital is impossible without the further development of capitalism, and without the class struggle that is based on it. And it is into this struggle that capitalism is drawing the masses of the working people of the whole world, breaking down the musty, fusty habits of local life, breaking down national barriers and prejudices, uniting workers from all countries in huge factories and mines in America, Germany, and so forth.”

“Thus, Russia is punished everywhere and in everything for her backwardness. But compared with the rest of the population, it is the workers of Russia who are more than any others bursting out of this state of backwardness and barbarism, more than any others combating these “delightful” features of their native land, and more closely than any others uniting with the workers of all countries into a single international force for emancipation.

“The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavour to keep them disunited. Class-conscious workers, realising that the breakdown of all the national barriers by capitalism is inevitable and progressive, are trying to help to enlighten and organise their fellow-workers from the backward countries.”

7. In recent years, Negri (and Hardt) repeats the same in the language of our times:

“Traditionally the various kinds of migrant workers, including permanent immigrants, seasonal laborers, and hobos, were excluded from the primary conception and political organization of the working class. Their cultural differences and mobility divided them from the stable, core figures of labor. In the contemporary economy, however, and with the labor relations of post-Fordism, mobility increasingly defines the labor market as a whole, and all categories of labor are tending toward the condition of mobility and cultural mixture common to the migrant. Not only are workers are forced to change jobs several times during a career, they are also required to move geographically for extended periods or even commute long distances on a daily basis. Migrants may often travel empty-handed in conditions of extreme poverty, but even then they are full of knowledges, languages, skills, and creative capacities: each migrant brings with him or her an entire world, Whereas the great European migrations of the past were generally directed toward some space “outside,” toward what were conceived as empty spaces, today many great migrations move instead toward fullness, toward the most wealthy and privileged areas of the globe…

“Part of the wealth of migrants is their desire for something more, their refusal to accept the way things are. Certainly most migrations are driven by the need to escape conditions of violence, starvation, or depravation, but together with that negative condition there is also the positive desire for wealth, peace and freedom. This combined act of refusal and expression of desire is enormously powerful…. Ironically, the great global centers of wealth that call on migrants to fill a lack in their economies get more than they bargained for, since the immigrants invest the entire society with their subversive desires. The experience of flights is something like a training of the desire for freedom.

“Migrations, furthermore, teach us about the geographical division and hierarchies of the global system of command. Migrants understand and illuminate the gradients of danger and security, poverty and wealth, the markets of higher and lower wages, and the situations of more and less free forms of life. And with this knowledge of the hierarchies they roll uphill as much as possible, seeking wealth and freedom, power and joy. Migrants recognize the geographical hierarchies of the system and yet treat the globe as one common space, serving as living testimony to the irreversible fact of globalization. Migrants demonstrate (and help construct) the general commonality of the multitude by crossing and thus partially undermining every geographical barrier.”

Russian Revolution and Luxemburg’s Approach

Even being a direct observer of the happenings in Russia and being critical of Bolshevik practice, Rosa Luxemburg could keep a far more objective and materialist understanding of the problems of the Russian Revolution, in comparison to the theo-sectarian polemics around facts and counter-facts that is being exercised today globally during the centenary celebrations. In a letter to Adolf Warski written less than a couple of months before her assassination, Luxemburg comments on the two most crucial problems of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevik practice, refusing to subjectively analyse them. It is this objectivity that generated her revolutionary “optimism of will”. She writes:

The use of terror indicates great weakness, certainly, but it is directed against internal enemies who base their hopes on the existence of capitalism outside of Russia, receiving support and encouragement from it. With the coming of the European revolution, the Russian counter-revolutionaries will lose only support [from abroad] but also – what’s more important- their courage. Thus the Bolshevik use of terror is above all an expression of the weakness of the European proletariat. Certainly, the agrarian relations that have been established are the most dangerous aspect, the worst sore spot of the Russian Revolution. But here too there is a truth that applies – even the greatest revolution can accomplish only that which has ripened as a result of [historical] development. This sore spot also can only be healed by the European revolution. And it is coming!

George Adler, Peter Hudis and Anneliese Laschitza (ed), The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, Verso (2011), pp 484-85

The Economics of India’s Cow Fetishism

I think what intensified bovine politics in India is achieving is a sort of primitive accumulation in the livestock industry. It goes remarkably well with the concentration and centralisation of money and tax economies through the more formal measures like GST and demonetisation. These measures kill the autonomy of dispersed economic structures and fit them to the suction nodes of the neoliberal net of finance capital. The liberal and Keynesian economists have criticised many of these measures on the ground that they will destroy local economies and federal autonomy. Same well-meaning experts are criticising the way livestock policies have recently been formulated. The fascistic nature of their implementation is quite evident. However, the tangible structural change that is being effected through these measures are lost sight of in the overpowering moralism in these criticisms.

In a recent article in The Mint, some relevant statistics have been brought together. The authors rightly contends,

“It emerges that economics rather than religion drives cattle ownership in India. After adjusting for wealth inequality, cattle ownership shows a similar pattern across religions. Expectation of milk yields is what drives cattle ownership in India.”

They provide pertinent facts about the livestock economy and the negative impacts that the new policies and bovine politics have made on this economy.

“Female animals under two years would be expected to grow into milk-giving cattle. Breeding cows are still in their milk cycle. Everything else apart from these two categories can be described as non-milk animals. Only 15% of households own non-milk animals in India. This is half of the overall cattle ownership figure of 30%. Again, the figures are not very different across religions. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to guess where the non-milk bovines end up. They are the supply for India’s multi-billion dollar beef industry. It has been an unacknowledged but convenient arrangement. Most owners sell their non-milk cattle without asking questions about the end use. This is why the local cattle trade is crucial for India’s livestock economy. A government ban on sale of animals for slaughter in local markets, and vigilante mobs attacking those transporting cattle in the name of gau raksha, can destroy this arrangement. Everybody with stakes in the livestock economy would suffer as costs go up due to a pile-up of non-milk animals.”

However, the destruction of this existing arrangement is bound to proliferate new arrangements in the livestock industry. The unconcentrated dispersed cattle ownership based industry might lead to a greater degree of concentration and centralisation. The “local” cattle trade and meat businesses may give space to a more centralised livestock, meat and milk industry.

Hence, if till now it was economics, not religion that shaped cattle ownership and trade, then we must admit that it continues to be so. The economics behind restrictions, banning and lynchings must be recognised and revealed.

Kashmir beyond the Child Psychology of Partha Chatterjee

The argument that Partha Chatterjee peddles in his latest article in Telegraph on the ongoing Kashmir uprising is quite mainstream. It is of course presented in a subalternist language and with a lot of sympathy. But in its assertion of the autonomy of the subaltern masses, the subalternist sympathy becomes generally like that of those parents who find every action of their children to be revelatory about their uniqueness. And if other children seem to show some unique characteristics, these parents always find them resembling their own children.

Being a Bengali historian, Chatterjee reserves this feeling of empathy only for Bengali subalterns. Obviously this allows him to connect with other parents, sympathise and advise them. This is what Chatterjee is doing in this article – imploring other parents (Indian and Kashmiri) to recognise the crossroads in their children’s lives and help them pass them successfully, without sliding to “worst outcomes.”

Chatterjee finds Kashmiris resembling Bengali mourners at the funeral of Kanailal Datta in 1908, who shot at a renegade in the courtroom, and was hanged by the Britishers. He quotes an official report of the time,

“An extraordinary scene was witnessed at Kalighat at the time of the cremation of Kanai… Crowds thronged the road, people pushing past one another to touch the bier… Many women, to all appearances of a highly respectable class, followed the funeral procession wailing, while men and boys thronged around shouting ‘ Jai Kanai’!””

According to Chatterjee, the Kashmiri act of mourning and rioting for an ‘Islamist terrorist’ similarly “perplexed” the officials and others. A proud father is always ready to dispel people’s perplexities towards other kids, by flaunting his own wisdom of parenthood remembering the childhood of his children.

Thus, continues the wiseman’s argument, where patronising eventually takes a more mainstream turn. Subalterns always perplex non-subalterns. Hence, they need specialised experts to interpret their actions and language. Left to themselves, the innocence of subalterns makes them vulnerable to all kinds of manipulations. Actually, they always look for “figures of love and reverence” and “pure selflessness.” Hence, the Kashmiris themselves are innocent and victims of “bad” manipulations by the two neighbouring states and “routine politicians.” What is happening is now an outrage against these manipulations constituting “the crossroads.”

So, Chatterjee asserts, “Kashmiri nationalism stands at the same crossroads where Indian nationalism stood a hundred years ago.” Pure subalterns wanting to be tended with love, care and self-sacrifice are looking for the figures that epitomise them. If “democratic nationalism” is not “given a genuine chance”, there will be a slide –

“Given the bankruptcy of the politics that has tried so far to accommodate Kashmir’s national aspirations within the Indian federal system, there is a tendency now for the young to adopt an Islamist idiom to vent their demands. If this trend gets stronger, the best result might be a new popular movement, Islamist in temper but with deep roots in local communities…The worst outcome would be the burgeoning of jihadi groups that no one will be able to control.”

Hence, as subalterns are bound to be instrumentalised or domesticated, why not channelise their energy for some good cause, which protects them and mobilises them in the interest of progress and democratic nationalism, thus saving them from an uncontrollable jihadi sectarianism?

But that leaves the story twisted – not just in Kashmir, but also that of the early twentieth century Bengal. Chatterjee does not tell us what happened to Indian/Bengali nationalism “beyond the crossroads”, at least not in this piece. In fact, he does not clear the ambience at “the crossroads” too. He talks about outcomes without talking about the processes. And outcomes are explicitly seen as sliding to worse, if they are not short circuited by “democratic nationalism”. “The bankruptcy of the politics” leads “to a tendency …to adopt an Islamist idiom”, which if not saved through “democratic nationalism” would result into “the worst outcome.”

Actually, the Bengali bhadralok has never been able to cope with the partition of his Bengali nation. The year 1971 soothed him but the scar that 1947 gave runs very deep. Historians like Chatterjee do understand it, but dil hai ki maanta nahin. How could the Islamic enticement to integrate with Pakistan ever be stronger than the Bengali brotherhood?

Hence, azadi is fine as it can be variedly interpreted, and one clever interpretation is that of the Indian left, which Chatterjee articulates so well:

“Azaadi is not the name for a blueprint of Kashmir’s future political state. Rather it is a rejection of India’s armed occupation and the declaration of the right of the Kashmiri people to decide its own future.”

It is all due to the intransigence of India and Pakistan that no breakthrough is happening. They see Kashmir as a site for their competition. Chatterjee goes ahead and talks about progressive constitutional options as tried in Canada to resolve the Quebec question. All these must be tried or things will slide to “the worst outcome.”

“To stop that slide, democratic nationalism in Kashmir must be given a genuine chance.”

It is the same Bengali hangover that seems to play its role here – pitting “democratic nationalism” of Sheikh Abdullah against Islamism/Pakistan. Chatterjee seems to judge everything according to tangible historical outcomes and options, rather than in terms of the processes that might lead to multiple outcomes and options. Azaadi is of course “not the name of a blueprint”, but a movement that houses many contesting blueprints.

Why not? It could also be about the redefinition of South Asia – a movement against thinking in terms of established states and institutions. It could be a signal to subsumed nationalities in the region to revolt against internal segmentation of politico-economic agencies, against differential surplusing and inclusion/exclusion of populations. It could be a struggle against the evolving framework of regional political economy that hierarchises peoples, while including some and reserving/surplusing many, to keep the structure under control and “human resources” competitive.

But most importantly, why are we not considering the stone throwing and infinitely resilient, yet defiant Kashmiri youth a sign of the times – the evolution of a popular subjectivity of the precariat leading a real movement that abolishes the present state of things? Why is Chatterjee bringing an example from the Bengali history that seemingly demonstrates innocence and malleability of the masses? Crossroads are about the opening of new horizons too. And definitely, the people’s history of early twentieth century Bengal is extremely rich in this regard. It is unbelievable that Partha Chatterjee is unaware of the complexity of those times. But perhaps the subalternist notion of subalternity doesn’t allow him to render any overt political agency to subalterns except as fodder for the two sides in the Manichaeism of mainstream institutional politics.

There, were far more interesting things happening than a funeral march, which was just a symptom, a temporal spectacle. Beyond spectacularity, while Bengali bhadralok radicals were mired in the voluntarist and masochistic interpretation of Bhagavad Gita, a new Islam was rising in Bengal that gave radical meaning to the everyday struggle of people providing a ground to the evolution of popular subjectivity. In this regard, let me extensively quote from a recent article on MN Roy written by a very astute historian of communism in Bengal, Suchetna Chattopadhyaya, published in the first volume of Communist Histories (Left Word, 2016, pp 45-46), edited by Vijay Prashad:

“The ‘new’ Islam of the early 1910s, in its populist political form, took shape in the backdrop of the ‘new’ plan to sharply alter the physiognomy of the city, the Balkan Wars as a ‘prelude’ to the First World War, and the emergence of a new set of preacher- leaders known for their radical rejection of loyalist positions. One of the aims of pan-Islamist campaigners was to protect Islamic shrines and monuments in the Ottoman Empire, under jeopardy in the climate of Balkan Wars. These efforts by a segment of the intelligentsia resonated, stirring empathetic response among the masses. The immediate material context of this identification was the aggressive and invasive implementation of colonial construction plans that had disturbed conurbations from Kanpur to Calcutta. Though public protests in Calcutta revolved around the issue of mosque demolitions by the authorities, the submerged feelings at a popular level reflected social anxieties and anger over looming evictions. The anti-demolition meetings, including those directed against the Port Trust authorities in Khidirpur, saw large participation of cooks, waiters and small traders. The protestors experienced and envisaged uprooted neighbourhoods, destroyed settlements and forcible expulsions from their dwellings. In the backdrop of such a large-scale offensive from the top, pan-Islam, and popular protests interacted and forged political combinations. With the coming of a major conflict, and British declaration of war against Turkey, the pan-Islamist support for the Ottoman Caliphate came to be echoed in mosques and bazaars, in prayers and conversations and in the texture of everyday life.”

Whatever the limits of historical languages and institutions inherited by the people be, the organic political process (not necessarily around formal state apparatuses) grounded in popular everydayness renews the subjectivity of the multitude, always exploring and exploding the limits that temporally bind it. Subalternisation should be seen as procrustean endeavours of the State apparatuses to depoliticise the everydayness and alienate this subjectivity. However, pure subalternity is never achieved, the multitude accepts new bondages only to master and destroy them. Hence, assuming any innocence on the part of the “subalterns” in Bengal and Kashmir in the process of the “slide” that Chatterjee talks about is not only factually wrong, but politically meaningless and even dangerous. Such assumption autonomises political practices and ideologies from the real political ground and reduces them to mere objects of the elitist and statist operation of naming and shaming.