A clockwork (RED)

Thursday evening; Jantar Mantar:

It’s chilly. It’s getting darker by the minute. But still, there’re a handful of people who’ve gathered at this ‘epicentre of democratic rebellion’ to ‘protest’ against the same old sin – the proverbial ‘justice being delayed’ and in effect, ‘being denied’ routine. You can make that out by the rush of OB vans, press photographers and a dim glow of the candles that these ‘activists’ have lit (candlelight vigils are the in thing these days, you know. No one gives a rat’s posterior about the good old ‘gheraos’ of the Parliament or pelting stones at the police – the latter being revived by, surprisingly, JNU ‘students’).
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It’s the same story, different plot. These well-dressed activists with their leather boots and carefully koeled eyes, stylish mufflers and touched-up cheeks, hourglass figures and dark-rimmed glasses have gathered to demand justice – again.
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Though this time, it’s for Ruchika Girhotra, the school-going tennis player who was molested and driven to suicide by the former DGP of Haryana, the evil, the perverted-looking SPS Rathore, 19 years ago.
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There’s an old man whom the cameramen seem terribly interested in – five news channels and 4 of their print colleagues jostling for space to immortalize this man in their respective mediums before the other does. I hear him talk; I recognize his face. I have a vague recollection of having talked to him somewhere, about something now too trivial to recall.

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He leans into an attractive female print journalist’s face to tell her his name. I remember the guy. He allegedly took early retirement from a well-paying job to ‘fight corruption’

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He’s being showing up, talking about and formulating solutions for everything from corruption to the city’s green cover for months. Maybe years – who knows? I’m just a trainee journalist (young guy, as some one recently referred to me) – been on the job for a very little while.

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Ok. Screw this guy – some lady just broke down. The cameramen rush. The attractive reporter follows. ‘Why are you here ma’am?’ she asks (probably congratulating her on finding the lead to her story).

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Lady: ‘We want justice [?]’

Are you fucking kidding me?! What else do you think she’s there for, you bimbo!
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Some one else has arrived. It’s someone who’s actually been fighting for his son. Actually, against those who killed his son in a fit of rage what with alcohol governing their bloodlust.

He’s in the background though; not visible till one of the ‘organizers’ of the protest calls him to the centrestage, as it were, of the protest. He says a few words. Tries to melt into the background – a tear almost escaping his left eye as he gets nostalgic, heck may be even misses his son.
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Company arrives. Chicks, too. Fair, retro black rimmed glasses, an overdose of kajal, khadi jholas, sneakers, no make up. Attractive. Intellectual. Feminists from, guess where. JNU.


The chicks strike up a conversation with the man. He acknowledges their presence with a nod to one from the group of three he seems to recognize. “What happened to your son was a mockery of our judicial system. It had happened earlier, too. Jessica, Katara, and now Ruchika. We’ve always raised our voices against it,” she says. “There have been so many marches at Camps, by almost every political party – AISA, SFI, ABVP, DSU, NSUI, AAA, GAGAGA.” B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.
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She IS actually hot. She gets her friend to click a picture of her ‘protesting’. Probably shows it off at the 24X7 Dhaba on the JNU Campus in the middle of the night, too.

“Thank you,” says the man, smiles, turns his eyes away.

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Another ‘regular’ activist appears. “Hey, did you catch me on that show last night? I showed the anchor, didn’t I?” he smiles a self-laudatory smile.

“Hello sir – how’s the case going? Did I tell you about this vigil at North Campus? How’s his sister? Did you watch the show?”

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I go back. Report. It gets reduced to a filler on the Nation page. I laugh as I introduce the idea of the candle industry being behind such regular ‘vigils’ seeking justice. I get pissed. I discuss Lenin’s vanguard theory with a senior. Get dismissed – all in good humour, of course.

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My ‘comrades’ read psychological theses on revolutionaries; march in political marches. Discuss the ‘revolution’ in 10x12 rooms, sipping tea and snacking on subsidized samosas somewhere on the fringes of the national capital, even as aircrafts whiz by above them, surrounded by state-funded ‘academic’ courses, bungalows belonging to diplomats a few kilometers away, malls at walking distance, erstwhile intellectuals, revolutionaries, dissidents now reduced to rotting zombies preaching the way forward, dissidents who forgot the way OUT a long, long time ago.
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Stories upon stories from the tribal heartland of MP get published even as a search for the good old ‘Coke’ ensues.
The poor Delhi boy has still not found his ancestral roots. Language has been of no avail. Interest has mocked the shit out of him. He looks for a punching bag. Well – don’t even try THIS one.

The madness. The sinister, evil, subtle madness.

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I get mocked at office as I flash my expensive phone; on public forums by intellectual friends – pretend and otherwise – for my ideological beliefs. It’s to cold to wear Che or Marx.

My ‘friends’ attribute my acumen to a consequence of the uninhibited, calculated and unrestrained methodology of ‘ass kissing’.

But SHE smiles. THEY smile. It’s cool – really.
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I come home after a long day of doing my bit (knowingly) to keep the established order intact.


I quench my hunger; open a large volume of Lenin’s collected (oops – my ignorance again – selected) works. The pain goes away as I get through the first paragraph. The next few lines even more satisfying than the first three puffs of the day’s first Gold Flake (Kings, if you must know).

My phone rings. Have you heard my new ringtone? It’s this new Kasabian single – Underdog.
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“I’m the underdog…live my life on a lullaby, keep myself right on this train…I can’t say for the people – they don’t matter at all (presently) – I’ll be waiting in the shadows till the day that you fall…”

- Mr. Jojo Rising

Fragments...

He was a Communist. Perhaps not.

He almost admitted it on a rainy June night after he’d held my hand and walked from the television room to his own for almost the last time. His health didn’t permit him to watch much telly after that night…

I was fresh back from ACJ – a committed socialist, though still embedding socialism in my mostly opinionated outlook in life. I was showing him three of the books I’d bought from an up-market mall in Chennai. On Che, another on the Naxalite movement in India, and one on Castro. “Check the library. I think I had a book on Fidel,” he said.

“Dadu, you’re a Communist, aren’t you?” I asked. He smiled and looked away. The silence lasted long. Really long.

“Why? Why do you ask me that?” he said. “It’s…I dunno. You don’t pray. And you have all those books in the library,” I replied.

“I was in the I.B. I used to get many books like that each week; and was expected to present a thesis on each according to an allotted deadline,” he said, still looking away.

“But, there are so many other things, too,” I tried. “Like what?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I gave up; getting up to leave.

“In your line of business – as in mine, one should never accept one’s ideological beliefs. Or reject them,” he said.

My dad gave me my grand dad’s passport as he cleaned his room a few days after his death. In addition to a book on Islam that he’d written on orders commissioned by an officer in the I.B after retirement. And one on Sikhism – written in Punjabi in the Persian script.

His copy of the Holy Quran (“written in the Roman Script” – as the cover proclaimed) was purchased from Ankara when granddad had been posted to Turkey. The Holy Bible procured from the Vatican lay in another corner.

He was to be made a Sikh – in accordance with customs in his village in the Punjab; our ancestral land – Sialkot, after he reached a certain age. He started smoking at the age of 14.

Partition – he walked from Sialkot to Shimla. It took him a month. No entry in his passport. Tales he never told me. Tales he never told anyone.

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The first entry in his passport: Pakistan; April 14, 1955. Sent on a mission. Seemed like a ‘cover posting’ – certainly wasn’t one. Knew the Quran by heart. Wrote a thesis on it. But he wasn’t a Muslim

Next entry: Saigon, South Vietnam; March 12, 1957. Breakfast with the communists, “and dinner with the capitalists in Hanoi the same night,” as he had told me. “The same schedule for more than a year. Someone by day, someone else by night. Time and over again. And again…” he had trailed off.

1962: One on one with the Chinese. Kills. Comes back alive. In the service of his country. Medal.

1967: No entry on his passport. Naxalbari. Communists vs. capitalists in Kerala, West Bengal, Delhi…

He admittedly killed 12 men. Who, or what were they? “They impeded the founding tenet of Nehruvian India. Intelligence wanted them dead.” But what was their ideology. No answer. In the service of his country. Medal.

Trouble in Sikkim. Covert operation. Shoots the emperor. Flees. In the service of his country. Medal.

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I should have noticed it in the wry smile he had given me when I had picked-up on of his favourite books from the library, a year ago, before I went to Chennai. The book was called ‘Guerrilla Warfare’.

“Why do you want to read it?” he had asked me. “Well, I want to understand what it is,” I had replied. He shook his head. “The question for which you should be looking for an answer should be ‘why’ it is,” he had said.

What should I make of his strong disbelief in Hinduism – rituals, idol-worship et all, his library of books like the ‘History of the C.P.S.U (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Red Star over China, collections upon collections of speeches made by Fidel Castro to a nascent Socialist Cuba and an eponymous thesis ‘Guerrilla Warfare’ containing Mao and Che’s writings translated into English.

I download the internationale. Make him hear it. He smiles…looks away…

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“Before you do anything anyone tells you to do, ask “why”.

“Breakfast at Saigon, dinner at Hanoi…ideology…? Just ask ‘why’…In the service of his country…

Maybe he was a communist. Perhaps not…

R.I.P

Infamous as I am for making sweeping generalizations, and not to be done in by all the foot-soldier work I’m being made to do as my first month at work at a 90-year-old national daily comes to an end, here’s another one to keep your ridicule of yours truly alive – Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, as Elizabeth Taylor (his dear friend) addressed him in the early 80s soon after the world realized that his skin tone was not much of a reason to keep the euphoria he inspired below that which his ‘white’ peers could generate, was a socialist at heart.

I’m sure you’ve started laughing by now, but as always, I’m going to try and corroborate this one, too. Everyone who’s anyone in any part of the world knows who MJ was and has heard most of his songs somewhere of the other. It is here that I would like to draw the reader’s attention to some of his songs.

Think back and try to remember the first time you heard the Earth Song, or Heal the World. Mind you – he was no mere social worker trying to maintain the status quo in society by just drawing people’s attention to issues which had been ignored by many and for too long – but an activist with a socialist outlook. This can plainly be seen in his attempt to drag people into action. The earth song video is a very good example.

The dead animals and the barren earth are not surrounded by groups of people (read ‘social workers’ a la the NGO culture of today) ‘healing’ the wounded animals or ‘awakening’ the people into recognizing their rights and demanding them from their governments. There is no UN (whose footage is visible more in his music videos than anywhere else) with its multiple agencies engineered to further the interests of the developed world, but the people.

The people who have lost loved ones in a war-torn land. People whose natural habitat has been polluted and left dead by the activities of companies based in a foreign land. People who want it back; people who shed tears at their own loss. The emphasis is not on fixing responsibility on anyone – but on reclaiming what is lost. In this attempt they fall to the earth on their knees and attempt to revive their mother earth by feeling it and comforting it with their bare hands. What better metaphor or symbolism for grass-roots activism can there be?

Here’s another example, then. His epic hit single, Bad. Now come on. Even a 7 year old who has watched the video will tell you it’s anarchic. He/she may not say it in such a way, but something to this effect shall indeed be said. Again, the emphasis on recognizing the under-ground culture, of understanding the cultural significance of it, on saluting the power of unity – even if it is the unity of those considered the scum of the metropolis, living at the subway station – it is a call to the people. The people who are not in the mainstream to keep faith in themselves.

Black or white. Do I even have to explain this one? This is the best attempt at positive social engineering that I consider plausible and tangible. Here you have a black man right in your own living room telling you it’s ok to be who you are. Telling you something that anthropologists and sociologists have been trying to articulate in a popular way for ages. And he does it in a few minutes on television. Again, what is appealing is the fact that the song can be seen as a metaphor for MJs own life. This was a time when MJ was putting a lot of junk in his body to get rid of a psychosis that he had developed very early in his life – one that was caused by his skin tome and the baggage that came with it. This was incidentally also the time when the media had gone all guns on his changing skin tone. One should view it with that in mind too. The iconic MJ was asking for acceptance. For the same love that he got when he was black. It was his way of saying ‘I’m the same guy. I have a lot of problems in my head. Please help me get over them.”

“If you’re thinking of being my baby, it don’t matter if you’re black or white.” It went. He was black and now he was white and would become whiter before he left the world in shock and agony last Thursday. It truly didn’t matter if he was black or white. He was, and always will be our baby.

Atithi Devo Bhava for us, “curry bashing” for them

The Indian Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) has added another weapon to its “Incredible India” arsenal. Yes, the same campaign which seeks to sell India as a safe, oriental and culturally exciting destination to the rest of the world. This latest “weapon” is simply the new advertisement that the ITDC has been circulating on most television channels lately – that of a culturally sensitive and clearly right-wing Aamir Khan saving the day for two white, foreigner girls as they shop around in the back-lanes of Bombay – that oriental paradise that Gregory David Roberts (incidentally from Australia himself) hails as the city of cities and one that is closest to his heart.

 

Anyway – so there’s this ruffian, see? And he tries to touch the girls and then tries to sell them a cheap hotel room, and then he’s joined by taxi drivers, tourist guides, auto rickshaw drivers et cetera – each selling his own…er…”service”. As the two unassuming and helpless girls drown in a sea of invitations and echoes of “Madamji, madamji”, their knight in shining armour appears – to reprimand his own countrymen for the ill treatment that they are subjecting their foreign guests to and reminds them of their ancient heritage – of their land being that of guest worship (read deifying anyone with a less-flatter nose and better skin tone – you know, as part of our continuing respect for our erstwhile colonial masters). What he does is all too visible. However – what is of consequence, in my opinion, is what he says. Aamir Khan of the Narmada Bachao aandolan and Lagaan fame says “respect them because its from them that you get your income. If you cause them displeasure – believe you me – they’ll go back with a very bad impression of our company (oops! I meant country) and never come back!” How…beautiful! This is certainly a great service that Aamir does the country, you know – no matter how right-wing and begging for the love and respect and (don’t forget) money of the global tourism community he seems. A country which is so firmly entangled in the web of international politics, the neo-liberal economy and needs resources from the world market to fuel it’s ever-expanding capitalist fantasies. We surely must respect the world community then,  shouldn’t we? Of course!

 

As the idea for this post gets formed in my head – I change the channel as soon as Khan’s tirade is over – to a news channel. The events in Australia – quite well-referred to as “curry bashing” present a sad irony, to say the least. So I realize, that as I watched Aamir Khan reprimand his countrymen for the lack of respect that they show their foreign “guests” (who come here to do nothing except get their illegal income exchanged for the US dollar, or buy cheap drugs, or smoke the best hashish in the world, or to molest minors or participate in ‘rave’ events) some hooligan in Australia stabs an Indian student at a party just because his skin is a few tones darker. Some good for nothing “mate” with another one of his “mates” with nothing to do, decides to throw a Molotov on an Indian student who's reading in his front yard. The media – as we know it – was surely sent into a tizzy. Coverage – yes. Adequate coverage – I don’t think so.

Compare this group of incidents (I believe 4 at the time of writing) to the hullaballoo that had been created when a Swiss and a German tourist had been molested in Rajasthan and raped inDelhi, respectively. The Tourism Ministry went into denial initially, but was soon forced to acknowledge the incidents and apologize to the world's tourist community. Similar was the case of Scarlett Keeling – the teenage neo-hippie girl of a classic hippie mom who had come to India to have a “nice time” (read mixing psychotropic drugs like LSD and Ecstasy with alcohol for that ultimate kick) – but ended-up getting raped and killed instead. The country was again criticized for not being able to provide a better environment for drug-crazed junkies and a few police officials were suspended and their seniors transferred. The media ate it up and barfed it for months. However, is the media acting with the same “responsibility”  now?

 

Sure. We’ve got the Australians saying that the attacks were not racially motivated. Then we have Indian officials saying that they were. Then the Australians say, “Yeah – I guess” and then the Indians say “How bad! How rude, I say!” and the victims of these assaults lie in hospital – either in coma, or nursing head injuries, or 30 per cent of their burned bodies.

 

MR S.N MISHRA, SHRIMATI SONIA GANDHI (it is an established fact that YOU run the government) MR. PRIME MINISTER – I’m sure you know about these attacks. But – what are you doing about it/them? Does your dialogue with Australia depend only on nuclear energy raw-material sharing agreements? Like the time you were in constant touch with that country when you needed plutonium so that you could go ahead with the Indo-US nuclear deal?  

 

What is more aggravating is the fact that there are completely ludicrous reactions coming in AND being reported – that Indian students are more vulnerable to such attacks - being one of them. Oh please! Wouldn’t they be? Because they hail from a country whose government is more into making money from its foreign trade and tourism? Which has recently bent over backwards to the US on a million counts and occasions?  A country which WANTS to send scapegoats to these rogue states in the name of bilateral relations? The establishment clearly doesn’t care about what happens to these people after they’re out of the country’s borders (as if they really did while they were inside it either, hah!). So while Air France routinely ill-treats passengers of Indian origin, Sikh sects clash in Vienna and Indian students in Russia (oh dear) as well as the US are targeted – we should all sit in our homes and watch the story unfold on the corporate media’s stage (most of their bosses are American, Russian or European anyway). We watch what they want us to watch. We read what they want us to read – after doctoring it, deleting whole paragraphs of information which is considered “sensitive” for us brownies. As the white man expresses his dejection at being knocked-off the world’s stage and Indian middle class families indoctrinate their kids with “ideals” such as minding their own business while in another country – the establishment kisses the international community’s feet. After all – we can’t blame the parents, can we? They’ve been privy to the Indian government’s disregard and lack of involvement for a long, long time and hence, are in a position to give such advice.

 

Well – I’ve got a solution. Something that LTTE supporters may approve of. MISTA PRIME MINISTA – why don’t you send the IPKF to Australia? They can go there – have a few drinks, check out the Sydney Opera House and then get down to doing what they did when they were sent to Sri Lanka to quash the embryonic eelam struggle; something that they’re best at – raping women of all ages and sizes (lets keep the looting and plundering details to orselves this time at least!). But hey – this time it’ll be better than the last. There’s no Prabhakaran to blow-up a war criminal in India. Besides, guess all those who believe in punishing such wrong-doers by death have started looking to America, the European Union and Israel. Which is a good thing for the Congress and especially the UPA government.

    

Humari zaroorat, humara bank!

(OUR NEED, OUR BANK)

 

It’s a true Robin Hood-esqe tale with a modern twist. Cadres of the much-despised Communist Party of India (Maoist) are literally giving the establishment that THEY despise a run for their money (read: financial gains wreaked on unsuspecting and economically unstable farmers in the form of interests to be paid on loans for business and other purposes). The CPI (Maoist) has successfully implemented a parallel system of banking in the Pashim Champaran, Purvi Champaran, Sheohar and Sitamarhi districts of North East Bihar – providing financial assistance to those who need it at terms which vary according to the purpose for which the money is required.

 

While the rate of interest for the purpose of financing education and/or marriage varies from two to four per cent, the rate of interest for financing business activities that the applicant desires to undertake is slightly higher. Two things need to be pointed out here: not only is this a fitting reply to those critics of the Marxist ideology – that is, the naysayers and doomsayers who reprimanded the Indian Left for it’s “anti-people” and “totalitarian” policies, rejoicing in its failure to garner support in West Bengal and Kerala, and hence concluding that its stint in the country was over, but also a wake-up call to the degenerate scum that the more liberal Left political groups have become. THIS is what a socialist setup is supposed to look like, people – not like the abominations that you’ve created in Kerala and West Bengal.

 

Not only is this parallel system of banking more “people-friendly” – advancing loans on easier financial terms and according to the needs of those who need it (Marx did predict a Communist society in which the mantra was to be “From each according to his ability, and to each according to his need) – but also in perfect symmetry with Marx’s own critique of the extent to which business activity becomes the reason for the existence of man in a Capitalist setup. Hence, not only is there a sort of “preference” – if you will – for the causes most crucial to the development of the “human potential” that Marx believed was the ultimate goal of man’s existence (through cheap finance for activities such as marriage and education) but by the extra interest being charged for business activities, the banking system seeks to reduce the rural sector’s emphasis on business activities rather than undertaking productive activities such as agriculture et cetera – activities more sited to a rural setup.

 

Needless to say, the money being got is from bank hold-ups and kidnappings – activities that characterize the Maoist ideology and rightly target individuals/establishments that nourish themselves by the blood that they suck from the villager in the form of the ridiculous amount money that they charge as interest. The fact that the outfit has been able to formulate and implement this system – in spite of all governmental and other hassles - is reason enough to laud it and cherish it as an articulation of the fact that there is hope, still.

Indian fascism should come of age?

Now this is something that immediately caught my eye (and made me suppress an unusually strong impulse to retch as I went through it). It seems there are no limits when it comes to being featured on the "SUBverse" column that the TOI carries every alternate day, I believe. The following text is that of the same column. The date of publishing was the 27th of April. The article/opinion piece was called "Right way to go". Please read through it before you read my reaction to it at the end of this post. I wasn't surprised when my reaction didn't get published. However, I was actually taken aback when they published a...well...I believe RIDICULOUS is the word I'm looking for - "opinion" in support of Suraiya's argument was published THE VERY NEXT DAY.

Right way to go
27 Apr 2009, 0000 hrs IST, Jug Suraiya


India's political spectrum is incomplete: it lacks a credible right-of-centre party which represents private enterprise. A capitalist party. To

talk about capitalism in the midst of a global economic crisis caused by unbridled greed in the fountainhead of the market economy, the US, might sound as inane and insensitive as Marie Antoinette's remark about people eating cake if they couldn't afford bread. With the American government having had come to the aid of stricken financial institutions in a move similar to nationalisation, the US has been renamed the USSR by those who would celebrate the death of capitalism and the rebirth of socialism. Such doomsayers overlook one point: it was capitalism not socialism which enabled the western economy to scale the heights from which it has, temporarily, fallen. Far from being dead, capitalism is merely gaining its second wind to lead the race again. (Even as the US government bails out bankrupt organisations, the founder of 'barefoot capitalism', Grameen banker Muhammad Yunus has started operations in the US to rescue small businesses through microcredit schemes, suggesting that the evils of capitalism are best solved not through state intervention but through more capitalism, appropriately applied.)

In India, with the vote of the aam aadmi the cynosure of all political ayes, no party can afford to talk about economic liberalisation. Economic reforms have remained on the back burner for the greater part of the UPA government's tenure, thanks to Left opposition. But despite the populist rhetoric churned out on his behalf, India's aam aadmi remains an endangered species. In Maharashtra alone, debt-ridden farmers on an average commit suicide at the rate of two every day. State intervention, in the form of much-touted loan waivers and employment guarantee schemes, has been unable to break the lethal, centuries-old stranglehold of the rapacious moneylender, whose usurious rates of interest continue to ruin millions of rural households through successive generations.

Both in order to break the shackles of its age-old poverty and to rise to the challenge of the global economic crisis, perhaps what India really needs today is what it does not have: a liberal capitalist formation, like the Swatantra Party of old. Contrary to popular belief the BJP has not filled this political vacuum. Far from espousing competitive free market dynamics which are the hallmark of true capitalism, the BJP with its base of petty traders represents monopoly interests which are anathema to economic liberalism.

As the success of Grameen banking has shown in Bangladesh and elsewhere (which now hopefully includes the US) the proper deployment of private capital to generate enterprise and wealth is not an exploitative privilege of the rich; it is the enabling prerequisite for the poor. Poverty alleviation measures based on state capital (loan waivers, employment schemes) are like leaky sieves; corruption and inefficiency drain almost everything away, leaving little or nothing for the targeted recipients. Private capital, through microcredit and other non-state financed systems, has to be efficient in order to survive.

It is too late for this election. But perhaps for the next polls which could well be sooner than anyone wants corporate India should think of forming its own secular, economically liberal party to contest at the hustings for its legitimate space in the political sphere. Why should India Inc fund this or that party, be it the Congress or the BJP or any other, which time and again not only fails to deliver on business expectations but also on providing succour to the common man? It's time aam aadmi and corporate India realised that their mutual fortunes are inextricably interlinked: if rural India prospers so does India Inc; if rural India hurts so do the sales figures of India Inc. So next time around might we see a party which stands for the common, capitalist good of corporate India and aam aadmi? Right on.



NOW READ MY REACTION TO IT.

This is in response to Jug Suraiya’s ‘Right way to go’ (Apr 27). Mr. Suraiya’s endorsement of a fascistic right wing political group representing the interests of India Inc. is ridiculous, to say the least. By dismissing state intervention in the form of farmer loan waivers, employment schemes and other such measures aimed at improving the economic conditions of the rural poor, only in the name of socialism, Mr. Suraiya makes a ludicrous sweeping generalization. May one remind him that it is ‘implementation’ where these state sponsored schemes lose out. It is the money-mindedness and corruption – or capitalist outlook – of those in bureaucratic positions which is to blame for their ineffectiveness and not state intervention. Is not the recent Satyam scandal enough to demonstrate the effect of the unbridled greed that capitalism entails? And as far as farmer suicides in Maharashtra are concerned – has heard of a little American corporation called Monsanto and its hegemony over the BT cotton market – a direct consequence of the neo-liberal policies of the Indian government ushered in after the economic liberalization of 1991? With its new-found tainted image – thanks to Mr. Raju’s misadventures in the global IT corridors of power – the aam aadmi stands to lose out on more due to capitalism than socialism. Mr. Suraiya, while reprimanding the country’s Left for keeping economic reforms on the back burner for years – should also acknowledge the fact that it is the same Left’s opposition to neo-liberalism that the Indian market has been insulated to the effects of the global financial meltdown to a large extent.

Jatin Anand
Delhi

The Revolution - Now and Forever

Revolutionary guerrilla warfare has gradually become an accepted alternative to the more conventional forms of organized war craft, as can be interpreted from various guerrilla offensives cropping-up all over the world in general, and the Indian sub-continent in particular. Though the historical roots of subversive warfare lie in the unorganized, nationalistic offensives of less-developed and militarily inferior countries against the hegemony and exploitation of Imperialist nations, the tenets of guerrilla warfare, or ‘camouflaged war’ have also been used in retaliation to the cultural, ethnic and economic atrocities of modern-day repressive, neo-imperialist and neo-fascist regimes against unsuspecting, and ill-equipped peoples and communities.

While nationalist outfits such as the Hamas in the war-torn Gaza strip and the Hezbollah in Lebanon - which have risen in retaliation to the expansionist and exploitative ambitions of Israel in the Middle East, the Al Qaida and the Taliban with their roots in the Afghani offensive against Soviet imperialism – are examples of the former, outfits such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, the Naxals and the Telangana struggle in Eastern and Southern India, the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) are but a few outfits crusading against the cultural and economic imperialism of repressive regimes.

Guided by the principles of Karl Marx and campaigning for the establishment of an equitable social setup using the force of subversive warfare to overthrow repression and exploitation – whether that of an invading aggressor or of an oppressive government, these outfits differ only on the basis of their motivations. However, experts and commentators are divided not only on the relevance of such grass-root struggles in this era of techno-based military strategy and armament, but also on whether or not to classify them as guerrilla forces. The purpose of this piece is to analyze these dichotomies from an informed point of view.

The relevance of guerrilla warfare was first questioned on the achievement of what is considered the epitome of modern military might – the nuclear bomb. This might was further amplified by the development of the thermo-nuclear H-bomb in 1954.

The United States of America was at the helm of a new world order inaugurated by various political and technological developments during the second world war and on account of its new-found diplomatic and military power adopted the policy and strategy of ‘massive retaliation’ as a deterrent to all kinds of aggression. The then-Vice President of the U.S, Richard Nixon announced: “We have adopted a new principle. Rather than let the Communist nibble us to death all over the world in little wars, we will rely in future on massive mobile retaliatory powers.” The implied threat of using advanced nuclear weaponry to thwart myriad bands of ill-equipped guerrilla warriors in terrain inimical to conventional warfare such as mountains, heavily-forested areas and urban centres was absurd. In his foreword to the writings of Mao Tse-Tung and Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare, Capt. B.H Liddell Hart compares it to “talk of using a sledgehammer to ward off a swarm of mosquitoes.”

Capt. Hart goes on to underline the fact that the use or even the threat of using the nuclear deterrent against the unconventional form of warfare practiced by guerrilla warriors actually increases the possibilities of limited war pursued by widespread local aggression and testifies to the fact that guerrilla warfare is not only relevant, but the only retaliatory response to such massive military force – making ‘camouflaged’ offensives the future of warfare.

According to Professor S. Irfan Habib, Historian and Research Analyst, “America’s proclamation was ridiculous. God only knows how and why they thought their tracking equipment and nuclear missiles capable of locating fluid bands of nomadic warriors acclimatized and fully-informed of the terrain of some of the most thickly-forested and naturally covered areas in the world. In addition to this, these guerilla fighters had also created subterranean networks of supply chains and communication, for instance in South Vietnam, as well as other routes which America, in my view had no capability of discovering whatsoever. What did they plan to do? Throw grotesquely expensive and powerful nuclear bombs and missiles in every cave and crevice they found in the countryside?”

In the words of Professor S S, Department of Political Science, Delhi University, “There should be no qualms about the fact that guerrilla warfare has indeed succeeded the conventional forms of war that characterized the conflicts of the pre-WW II era. Guerrilla warfare is the only kind of war that fits the conditions of the modern era well-suited as it is to take advantage of social discontent, racial ferment and nationalistic fervour – conditions that have shaped the contours of conflicts after WWII.”

Agrees Professor D G, Department of Sociology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, “In my view, the Naxalite movement in India is the biggest and most lucid example of the success of guerrilla warfare. In the four and a half decades since it has been operational, the movement has successfully carved out for itself a substantial part of the Indian mainland for itself. The debate centered on the morality of this struggle aside, it’s definitely a successful people’s movement and proves the mettle of guerrilla warfare.”

However, there are some who believe it is no match for the superior weaponry and techno-based manoeuvres that modern warfare entails. Believes Professor L K, Department of English, Delhi University, “Look at what has happened to the LTTE in Sri Lanka – they’ve almost been wiped out completely. And even the Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East are proving futile in the face of the carnage that the Israeli Defence Force is unleashing. Regardless of the plausibility and justness of the causes that these groups espouse, they are quite clearly succumbing to modern military techniques and weaponry.”

The other issue that experts and commentators are divided on – as has been mentioned before – is whether the motives and the causes that these groups espouse justify their classification as partly unorganized liberation groups practicing guerrilla warfare to achieve their ends.

In this regard, Professor Habib feels that it is fallacious to identify every unorganized anti-state outfit as a grass-roots organization modeled on the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions just because their preferred means of retaliation happen to be those of guerrilla warfare, “I don’t agree with it. The Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions were struggles of emancipation from imperialist hegemony and economic exploitation. They were not ethnic or cultural movements in any way like the Naxalite movement in our country or the ethnic-lingual struggle in Sri Lanka. I think the only grass-root struggles that deserve to be recognized as being true to the spirit of these great revolutions are the Hamas and the Hezbollah’s actions in the Middle East – battling are they are against American hegemony and defending their inherent sense of nationalism in the process. I am not questioning the validity or the justness of the LTTE’s struggle for Eelam or the Naxalite movement. I’m just saying that it is erroneous to put them on the same plane as these great revolutions of the past.”

Professor G disagrees when he says, “What should form the core of this discussion is the fact of exploitation. I don’t agree with Professor Habib because these grass-root struggles should be seen as retaliation to exploitation – no matter whether it is nationalistic, cultural, lingual or ethnic. I think they are on these struggles are truly modeled and should be seen as being on the same plane as the great revolutions of the past.”

Professor S agrees with this view, “What are a handful of peasants and unarmed civilians supposed to do in the face of an armed and exploitative state that takes joy in sucking their blood to fill its own coffers? They pick-up the gun – just like the Bolsheviks, Mao’s followers and those who shared Fidel Castro’s dream of a Cuba free from the tyranny of Batista and his inhuman regime.”

As Capt. Hart argues, guerrilla warfare is a kind of war waged by the few but dependent on the support of many. Although in itself the most individual form of action, it can only operate effectively, and attain its end, when collectively backed by the sympathy of the masses. That is why it tends to be most effective if it blends an appeal to national resistance or desire for independence with an appeal to social and economic discontent, thus becoming revolutionary in a wider sense.

Grass-root struggles hence can be said to be justified as the last resort for the utterly exploited – whether politically, culturally, economically or socially – depending on the nature and severity of the exploitation and the discontent it entails among its victims. As long as there is exploitation - of whatever nature and degree - there will always be a struggle to destroy the source of that exploitation. Whether an expansionist aggressor, insidious economic discrimination or social degradation due to the hegemony of a biased government - the forms of exploitation and its agents may change, but exploitation will remain – in one form or another. It is as an answer to this that the revolution is – and shall forever be imminent.