Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive in the US, made a simple, but significant point: “The Rosenberg case illustrates the excesses that can occur when we’re afraid.”
“In the 1950s, we were afraid of communism; today, we’re afraid of terrorism. We don’t want to make the same mistakes we made 50 years ago.”
This is an important lesson for us too…
Marxist historian V.G. Kiernan’s introduction to his translation of Muhammad Iqbal’s poems echoes Lenin’s classic essay in defence of Tolstoy. It provides a perspective to Iqbal’s contradictions, which arguably make him the greatest intellectual of the twentienth century India (including Pakistan). To paraphrase Lenin, the contradictions in Iqbal’s views are indeed a mirror of the contradictory conditions of his time – on the one hand, “centuries of feudal oppression, [colonialism] and decades of [colonial] pauperisation piled up mountains of hate, resentment, and desperate determination”. Iqbal strives to sweep away all the old forms and ways that characterised the old order. But on the other hand, “striving towards new ways of life, had a very crude, patriarchal, semi-religious idea of what kind of life this should be”.
Iqbal’s writings are full of such Tolstoyan contradictions – or what Kiernan says, “Iqbal, as usual, put new wine into old bottles not always well suited to it”; he “had ended by being, in some ways, the prisoner of the ideas that had promised to liberate him. All his life as a poet he had been using the hard, distinct, unyielding thoughts of a bygone age as supports round which the softer tendrils growing out of the amorphous sensations of his own age could twine themselves and climb. Dante and Milton did the same”.
Iqbal’s contradictions and consistency make him great. But, what was consistent in him? He “hated injustice; his protest, first made in the name of India, continued in the name of Islam; in this form it was reinforced, rather than superseded, by a protest in the name of the common man, the disinherited of all lands”. This is very important to understand ideas underneath the pan-Islamic theological crust that he developed to shape them.
Economist Nirvikar Singh in his latest column in Mint questions the exclusive focus on the rural-urban divide in policymaking. He points out at a more “pernicious” “social and economic divide” – which divides even the villages.
At the bottom of the heap are India’s Dalits, whose traditional social status is so low that they are outside and below the country’s complex caste hierarchy. Even when government spending reaches down into villages, the Dalits, living in segregated neighbourhoods, with the worst access to health and education facilities, may see little of the benefits.
However he finds that “Capitalism is beginning to break the caste system”. In fact, Dalits in India have more opportunities than African Americans in the US (the latter being permanently stigmatised due to their colour) because
Dalits in cities far from home have the opportunity to change their names and reshape their identities. This may be the first step in getting an education, participating in stronger social networks than their own, and eventually climbing the economic ladder.
So Sanskritization – cultural aping – is of course according to Singh an opportunity for Dalits!
Singh acknowledges that “capitalism is not a guaranteed destroyer of discrimination”, but he also stresses capitalism’s potentiality to neutralize caste. Once again he quotes Chandra Bhan Prasad that “Economic expansion is going to neutralize caste in 50 years. It will not end caste.” He concludes,
Maybe neutralizing caste is good enough: Caste can remain like the markers of national origin (Irish-, Italian-, or Indian-American)in the US, without being a basis for oppression
Singh is correct – capitalism does neutralize every difference to the extent that under this system based on generalised commodity production
As Singh himself says, migration (“circulation” of human beings as “variable capital”), along with Sanskritization, will have “positive knock-on effect”. Definitely the qualitative difference is extinguished between castes, they are all equally levelled as labour inputs. Castes are increasingly reduced to “markers” as of a 100 dollar note, a 10 dollar note etc – they are all ultimately various quantities or denominations of the same currency, the dollar…
But then the difference between a 100 dollar note and a 10 dollar note does remain – these “markers” allow the system to locate you within itself according to your ‘worth’. The difference between the excluded and the included is ‘extinguished’ – everyone is ultimately included even if differentially.
Yes, Singh and Prasad are correct – the caste system will be perhaps finished as the hierarchy of status in “next 50 years”, as a new caste system has already emerged based on the competition between “markers” – as between Godrej, Lux, Rexona and Palmolives.
This is
However, should we give Singh the benefit of doubt that as an economist he knows that these “markers” have vital roles to play in construction and dynamics of the labour market?
The following statement from an ML leader is obviously in right direction – trying to deconstruct the Singur movement, identifying various forces in it. However, in my view, a further ideologico-practical move has to be made – mobilising the ‘new’ working class evolving around these neoliberal projects – an unorganised multitude which neoliberalism is bound to proliferate. Only this will stop us from being trapped in the mire of ‘nostalgic’ anti-capitalism, and encourage us to move ahead in the direction of beyond-capitalism.
Kolkata, September 4 At a time when Naxal groups are demonstrating along with Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee against the Tata Motors’ small car factory in Singur, CPI-ML (Liberation) — the largest Naxal party — vociferously criticised the Mamata brigade on Thursday.
The party criticised Mamata and her followers for siding with land owners, without sparing a thought for the landless labourers and unrecorded bargadars (those with no-eviction rights).
“She is only speaking about land owners in Singur. Why are they silent about the landless labourers and others? Those who are demonstrating in Singur and claim to be Naxals should fight for landless labourers,” said Kartik Pal, Politburo member of CPI-ML (Liberation).
According to a survey conducted by the party, there are 300 people who are either landless labourers or unrecorded bargadars in Singur.
“A number of them are absentee landowners who have already received payment for their land. But the agricultural labourers have got nothing. Neither Mamata Banerjee nor the state government is thinking about them,” Pal added.
At present, small Naxal groups are sharing the dias with Mamata in Singur. They include CPI-ML (SOC) led by Purnendu Bose and Dola Sen, CPI-ML (ND) led by Paltu Sen.
Dipankar Gupta’s cynical article in The Times of India (Aug 30, 2008) is itself an expression of middle-class disenchantments, which he talks about. And Buddhadeb is undoubtedly in his brigade. In his anti-communist verbosity Gupta does exactly what he criticises. For him “the poor has never revolted”; it is the leadership, which everywhere rises in her name. Ironically, even to deny that the poor has ever revolted, it is a middle class intellectual like Gupta who has the privilege to proclaim this! Obviously in his discourse “they” will remain as “they” – “Why They Don’t Revolt”. So why should we accept his privileged denial about the poor(wo)man’s revolt, if he censures us for accepting the socialists’ claim that s/he does revolt, on the ground that they are elites?
According to Gupta, since the leaders came from the middle class or elite families the revolutions couldn’t be popular. This shows his ignorance about political processes, including class processes. Obviously he cannot be faulted for this, the disciplinarian divide that characterises the bourgeois academia does not require him to see things holistically (that’s the job of a generaliser, not an expert’s) – he is after all a sociologist! How can he understand that revolts/revolutions are conjunctural – their character is not simply determined by the membership of their leadership rather by the societal stage in which they occur? How can he understand that the process of class-ification, not the fixed descriptive sociological classificatory pigeonholes, allows revolutionary intellectual organicity to individuals from diverse backgrounds? How can he understand that revolution is not only a moment but also a process which comprises many “guerrilla fights” against “the encroachments of capital” before and after the “revolutionary moment” passes away? This was Marx’s understanding of the “revolution in permanence” or Mao’s notion of a “continuous revolution” or Lenin’s “uninterrupted revolution”.
Obviously within the commonsensical notion of revolution, for which the OMs (Official Marxists, as Kosambi characterised them) are most responsible, the 1949 event in China paints into insignificance the Hunan peasants’ self-organisation and struggle (as marvellously described by Mao in his Hunan Report) or the processes that constituted “Fanshen”, “Shenfan” and the Cultural Revolution. Within this framework a revolution loses its processual character, and is reduced to a moment and even a few elite figures. But why should we expect Dipankar Gupta to go beyond common sense? After all he is a “middle class” solipsist who sees the world made in his image – his class dominating everywhere, doing everything.
In fact, we can find a deep resonance between Gupta’s analysis and India’s chief security advisor MK Narayanan’s McCarthyist indictment of intellectuals. Both experts (in their respective fields) attempt to reduce movements to agencies, however the former does it as an expression of his academic cynicism, while MK Narayanan to find scapegoats. But both converge at a dangerous moment.
ET has published a good editorial on the changing tenor of Indo-Nepal relationship:
Fortunes have a propensity to swiftly change sides. And what seems to be the given order of things can swiftly come to be transformed. Witness the heartburn in India when news emerged that the new Nepali Prime Minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, was headed to Beijing instead of paying obeisance to New Delhi first.
If there’s one thing we haven’t yet gotten used to in our neighbourhood, it’s the sudden and complete transformation within Nepal. We were quite happy while we could treat Nepal like a province, a wee bit like a colony, and while their leaders would first and foremost be careful about our big brotherly concerns.
It was quite all right as long as the image of ordinary Nepalis only meant thinking of a pliable servant at home. Things were just fine as long as we could head up there without any restriction and virtually run the economy. Until the Maoists came along.
It is as if Nepal has discovered a new identity, an ability to stand up and speak for itself. After dumping the monarchy, which again irked us as the kings were quite part of our own royal families, the new Nepal now seems like it wants to talk on equal terms.
This could be a painful process, since as old habits die hard. And then, we were quite used to, say, a certain degree of extra attention. Now, when a Nepalese official ‘reassures’ us that India should not worry about the Nepali PM’s China visit since his nation will now pursue a policy of ‘equidistance’ with its two neighbours, it doesn’t cause much assurance.
Indeed, there’s a certain galling element to the whole notion of not being preferentially treated. And this could well reflect in ‘new’ issues being talked about when officials of the two nations meet. Already, Nepal is speaking of tricky issues like the thousands of Bhutanese refugees in its territory. What it will be like when it comes to stomach-churning things like water-sharing can only be surmised. Sigh! But for the good old days.
Whoever has written today’s ET editorial on communal tensions in Orissa has rightly pointed out the McCarthyite tactics of the repressive state:
The allegation against the Maoists gives the BJD-BJP government an alibi to step up its ongoing, and under-reported, project of repressing various grassroots movements in tribal areas in the name of containing Maoism“.
Should we be surprised by the National Human Rights Commission’s submission to the Supreme Court regarding Salwa Judum’s atrocities leaked by the Economic Times? The official human rights body “found that many of the allegations [against Salwa Judum] were based on rumours and hearsay, and devoid of facts. Again, many of the villagers whose names figured in the column comprising victims of Salwa Judum or the security forces were actually found to have been killed by Naxalites. FIRs had been registered in most of these cases and the state government had also doled out compensation to relatives of those killed. NHRC teams also discovered many of the villagers whose names figured in the list were actually Naxalites who had been killed in encounters with the security forces. A few other villagers were found to have died of natural causes, while yet another group of villagers whose names figured in the list of dead were actually found to be alive” (2). NHRC’s arguments here are quite clear and very logical –
if Salwa Judum or the security forces killed somebody, (s)he must be a naxalite; if (s)he was not a naxalite, then it’s obvious that (s)he was killed by the naxalites.
Avtar Singh Sandhu ‘Pash’
If not Frontier, read Tribune
If not Calcutta, talk about Dacca
Bring the clippings from
Organiser and Punjab Kesari
And tell me
Where are these eagles flying?
Who has died?
Time is not any dog
That can be chained and driven wherever you like
You tell us
Mao says this and Mao says that
I ask you, who is Mao to say anything?
For the complete poem, click here.
Being the only “policeman” who “has ever risen to so much influence in India”, Indian National Security Adviser MK Narayanan seldom minces words in revealing the designs of the Indian State for “national security”. He recently pronounced the focus of the state’s strategy against leftist militancy in the country. In an interview to The Straits Times, he clearly emphasised that it is the intellectual appeal of the Maoists that is letting down the Indian state in its fight against the Maoists. “…[W]e haven’t been able to break their intellectual appeal that they seem to still have”.
Narayanan further adds that “large numbers of the intellectual elite and civil liberties bodies provide a backup to the movement in terms of agitprop and other activities”. The fact that the Maoists “are still able to get support of intellectual classes is disturbing. Unless we can divorce the two … [defeating the Maoists] is not that easy”.
When asked if the Maoists are getting outside support, he said, “we have not seen any kind of infusion of arms or ammunition”. However it is the “educated elite…that gives them a connection to the outside world”. Evidently, it is that “connection” which needs to be broken.
In order to sever this “connection”, the Indian state must find intellectual scapegoats (like the Americans had the Rosenbergs and others) to terrorise the “educated elite”. Hence, we have Binayak Sen, Ajay TG… And the list is daily growing.
Beyond Capital 