The Bengali intellectuals are livid not at the CPIM party in particular (the CPIM of Jyoti Basu) or the philosophy of Communism in general, despite the fact that it is an idea that has been confined to the dustbins of history elsewhere in the world.
They are just hopping mad at Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and his politics.
Because he is *not* Left enough.
You see these same intellectuals, with a few exceptions like Suman Chatterjee (whose anti-Left stance has been as constant as his tendency to get married to multiple people), had been perfectly silent during the dark days of the 80s and the 90s when Ananda Margis were being shot down by CPIM goons while the law looked the other way, when a factory manager had a tire put on him by the workers and set on fire in broad daylight as the Left workers cheered, when three women were pulled out of a car to be raped and Jyoti Babu brushed it away with a ” such things keep happening”, when CPIM goondas rode on bikes brandishing pipe-guns preventing entire localities from voting.
As long as the city was brought to standstill by massive rallies against the imperial Americans and their instruments of evil like the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT), as long as bandhs protesting the anti-people policies of the Center gave the babus a day off, as long the militant trade unions of CITU sent another multinational packing from the city, as long as the powers-that-be blew out hot red air from body orifices, as long as Jyoti Basu handed out plots in Salt Lake at throw-away prices from the Chief Minister’s quota to the city’s “cultural elite” (read Leftist intellectuals), everything was just ah-ok
[Jyoti babu once famously asked why people ever complain about CPIM rule after all the plots of land he has given to the press, the artists and even the opposition.]
Usha Uthup, who has of late discovered a hidden stream of anti-CPIM-ness, verbalized the mindset of the left-leaning Bengali intellegentsia once upon a time with her ” Jyoti Babu Jyoti Babu don’t worry Jyoti Babu” song set to “Mustafa Mustafa don’t worry Mustafa” .
Nothing that happened in those happy days of Jyotism was worth protesting about or writing citizen’s reports on— not the reign of terror of the CPIM, not the total subversion of contrarian opinion in all the institutions and not the marginalization of those intellectuals whose views did not tally with the Left.
Things however started changing once Jyoti Basu, the darling of the “humanist” intellectuals, stepped down and Buddha took over. Noone knew how different Buddha actually was from Jyoti Czar before he became the CM—–as a minister he was as dogmatic as the rest of the Alimuddin crowd preferring to spend his time translating revolutionary works into Bengali and analyzing obscure movies of peasant uprisings.
But then something changed.
He first put the cat among the pigeons by saying that unregulated madrasas were being used to spread messages of Jihad. Immediately there was an outcry from many Left intellectuals as even hinting that there exists a concerted movement of radical Islam is blasphemy for “radical humanists”. Then started Buddha’s active courting of foreign investment, even the notorious Selim Group of Indonesia, once the bete noire of the Bengal Communists for having buttressed Communist-hating Soharto. Buddha’s aggressive industrialization drive was in sharp contrast to Jyoti Babu’s summer-time sojourns in European capitals, the official reason for which was attracting “foreign investments”. Because these rather faint endeavors produced nothing but better physical and emotional health for the leader of the destitute, they were acceptable to the real Leftists, albeit after a smirk or two.
However unlike Jyoti-dadu, Buddha was actually getting evil capitalists into the state. He was undermining the authority of the mighty trade unions, trying to get rid of the prevalent bandh culture (or as the intellectuals would say putting curbs on democratic expression of dissent) and dreaming of rapidly industrializing Bengal’s countryside, an endeavor that would provide opportunities for so many Bengalis, who had to leave the state due to the closure of industries in the 70s and 80s because of militant trade unionism and lack of electric power, to come back again.
So what’s wrong in all this?
Bloody hell it’s not Leftist !
For a state whose intellectuals have a tendency to glorify poverty (” We are too cultured to be rich”) and consider screwing capitalists and “imperialists” preferable to the flight of capital and loss of jobs, Buddha represents all that is not Bangali Communism.
For the JNU crowd of “historians” it has become increasingly difficult to explain over sips of capitalist beverages at the India habitat center why the CPIM central leadership opposed the same policies at the center that Buddha followed in Bengal,why Karat foams and froths about not undermining China while Buddhadeb argues for greater US-India cooperation.
Surely such a person had to go !
I saw a supposed Bangali comic taunting Buddhadeb by reading out passages from his uncle Sukanta, a noted revolutionist Bangla Communist poet, to point out how much he had deviated from the golden path of Communism. During the townhall discussion on NDTV, an audience member called for the need for an alternative “Leftist” movement without Buddha.
Why do I mention this? Simply to re-iterate that the present disturbance has not made a large section of Leftists disillusioned with the philosophy of Communism. On that contrary, it has merely provided them a rallying point to articulate their desire of bringing back the old Jyoti Basu days of “pure Marxism” and comfortable stasis.
Some of you might interpret this last few paragraphs as a defense of Buddhadeb. It is not. Buddha, for all his great administrative skills (and this reminds me of yet another Chief Minister) and his radical reforms,has failed , either willingly or because he is powerless in this respect, to change the fundamentally oppressive nature of Left rule that bases itself, among other things, on fear and subjugation of dissent. In failing, he has himself handed to his critics, on both sides of the political spectrum, a multi-pronged trident to draw blood. And they arent being shy in poking it everywhere.
For those of you who think I am shooting the messengers (the brave Left intellectuals), I say in my defense that I am not equating Buddha’s responsibility for atrocities with the political opportunism of the “Bam-ponthi” intellectuals—they of course do not balance each other out. However, it is not unfair to point out the not-so-hidden agenda of some of the prominent Left voices (often masquerading as “independent”) who have spearheaded the protest, especially when you consider how they have remained silent spectators when other atrocities perpetrated by the Jyoti Basu-led Left front have happened.
The divided loyalties of the Bengali intellectuals, torn between their Marxist ideals and loyalty to the hand that gives, has been perhaps best captured by Mrinal Sen (a mostly silent voice against Left Front barbarities in the past) walking in two marches on successive days, one taken out by “citizens against Buddhadeb” and one taken out by the CPIM in support of the Chief Minister. A sidelight: Prabhuji Mithun walked in support of Buddha which was slightly ironic considering that in movies like “Tulkalam” and “MLA Fatakeshto” he is shown as fighting for farmers against evil corporations out to acquire their land. Of course Mithunda has his reasons and I will not try to analyze them here as it is futile trying to peek into the mind of God.
Lastly, Nandigram has been a gift from above for an increasingly irrelevant Mamta Banerjee and for the religious right, who after years of being pilloried by the Left for atrocities on innocents in their states, are enjoying kicking the Reds in the nuts ( I have never seen terror like Nandigram says Mr. Advani [yeah right]) and even accusing the Left of communal violence against minorities, forgetting of course to mention that many of the victims and many of the accused are Muslims.
Once the smokescreen has cleared, political punches landed and the sense of outrage has dissipated, what’s left in Nandigram is a human tragedy of epic proportions whose the victims have cut across all political lines.
What’s even more horrifying however is what lies in the future.
With the continued perpetuation of the traditional Marxist power idiom of violent cadre-ism and the accompanying reactionary “itching-for-violence” Maoist-Trinamool presence in rural Bengal, incidents like Nandigram will remain just one rumor, just one notice, just one bullet away from happening.
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