Dynasty Politics In India: The Rahul Gandhi Gamble

During the first general election of 1952, a candidate of the Rama Rajya Parishad who was standing against Pandit Nehru asked him asked him why he did not support a ban on cow slaughter. “Don’t you love cows?” he asked. Nehru replied with his British sense of humour, “I love horses too.” That was his way of putting the distance between loving an animal and deifying it.

Rama Rajya is again in the news with the BJP claiming that this is the one ideal of good governance that all Indians have always cherished. So it will be Rama Rajya, Rama Setu and Rama Mandir for the BJP? It shows how out of touch with India the party has become.

The Dalits cannot have much love for Rama Rajya after what happened to Sambuka in the Ramayana. Even the OBCs may object to the upper caste bias of the epic and modern women may not want a husband who treats them so badly as the hero of Ramayana treated his wife.

Also has the BJP learned nothing from the Rama Setu debate with DMK chief M Karunanidhi? The Ramayana is a different text in North India from what it is in the South. The anti-Brahman movement in the South was virulently against the North Indian version of Hinduism. The BJP has a long way to go before it realises that Hindu society lives on division and sub-division. It has survived for centuries without a single political authority precisely because of its ability to prevent any single group to get so large as to dominate. Hinduism is not a unifying creed.

Now after sixty years of sovereignty, we are once again seeing the same fragmenting tendencies rule the party structure. Like some ancient dynasty, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty ruled over all of India for 42 years till 1989 with only an occasional usurper. Since 1989, the dynasty has never been in full power. It has to adjust to the demands of many regional subahdars and local nawabs.

Luckily for India, democracy thrives without single party dominance. Indeed, one way to admire what India has achieved is its ability to stay united without a strong central authority. Any exclusive powerful authority would have to exclude many or at least treat the core elite better than the periphery. That was what Congress did for its first 42 years. It looked after the upper crust and fed crumbs to the Dalits and the OBCs. When they revolted, the Congress edifice fell apart.

Now each group has its own party and wants a piece of the cake. The old vertical hierarchical caste society is becoming horizontal, though it is still as divided as it was before. There are occasional small unifying movements as with the Yadavs and Paswan in Bihar/UP. But they are local, not national. Nor does the BSP, despite the charisma of its leader, unite all Dalits

The Third Front is an acceptance of this cellular character of Indian society. Class is not reliable as a unifying factor as the Left should know by now. So a double negative factor —anti-BJPism plus anti-Congressism—is the unifying platform. Yet this has to compete against each separate negative. Anti-BJPism is called secularism and can combine many fragments as it did under the UPA. Anti-Congressism is not as strong as it used to be in the Seventies. So the NDA is fragile.

The Congress sensed this asymmetry. So it went it alone and contested as many seats as it could. It is trying to become truly national again. So, rather than accept three or four seats from Lalu Prasad whose star was sinking in any case, it contested almost 30 seats out of 40 in Bihar and similarly in UP as well.

The fisrt UPA has died; a new UPA arose from its ashes. This is the Rahul Gandhi gamble.

The Naxalbari Movement in West Bengal

Naxalbari Movement

It was exactly 43 years ago in 1967 that a minor clash between a police force and a group of armed peasants took place in an obscure corner of West Bengal. But it unleashed a force of events, which escalated over the years into a political movement, that derived its name from that area and brought about far-reaching changes in India’s socio-cultural scene. Today it evokes a variety of strong emotions ranging from admiration to denunciation, cutting across the political lines of the established parties. The movement itself is also hard pressed by new challenges and endemic splits. Yet, we cannot deny that even after four decades of its tortuous and self-divisive and often self- destructive odyssey, the movement that started in Naxalbari and now known as the Naxalite movement, still remains a force to reckon with. What is peculiar to the Naxalite Movement is not its physical occupation of, and administrative control over,land, but its abiding appeal among the dispossessed and underprivileged rural poor in certain parts of the country. The movement asserted the demands of the poor and landless peasantry in a way that shook the then atrophied Indian political scene. It sensitized the rest of our society to their desperate efforts to escape the intolerable conditions of economic oppression and social humiliation. Ideology Ideology is a set of ideas that form the basis of an economic or political theory or a particular group or person who holds them. Every movement has its own ideology. To know the ideology of the Naxalite movement we will have to study the nature of the movement first. Naxalism arose from certain basic factors-social injustice, economic inequality and the failure of the system to redress the grievances of large sections of people who suffered and continue to suffer. Here the idea is to create a classless society, which is free of any kind of inequity. Although land redistribution occupied the central stage of the movement, we should bear in mind that it is just an issue of the movement, which was popular at that point of time. The ultimate aim is to eradicate exploitation. The leaders behind the movement had a belief –“those who by economics judge every struggle by the amount of paddy seized or the size of land peasant received. They never judge by the yardstick whether the fighting consciousness of the peasants had increased. The fighting consciousness of the peasantry should be directed against the state machinery and the feudal class; without destroying the two no land reforms could be possible, since they stood against the interests of the landless and poor peasants.” One more important component of the ideology is the use of armed struggle. But we need to understand that it is just only a means to achieve a broader objective. As the upper classes are in a very dominant position, it is not possible to uproot them except through armed struggle. So Naxalites resort to violence only when realize that it is indispensable to the movement. So violence is just only a means and not the end itself. Again Naxalism should not be looked only for the benefit of agrarian peasants. It is something that transcends agrarian reality and relates to whatever field where there is inequality. So the Ideology behind the movement can be stated in the following points
• India’s liberation could be achieved along China’s path.
• An arm struggle is the only way out.
• Bringing a new social order, free of social inequality and class disparity.

Political Situation in West Bengal during the movement:

Naxalite movement derives its name from Naxalbari, a small place in Siliguri subdivision of Darjeeling district of West Bengal. It all started in 1967 after the first non-congress government came into power under the name of United Front Government. The dominant forces in the government were the Leftists. The main forces were the CPI and the CPI (M). They represented the aspirations of the marginalized and the poor. The minister-in-charge of Land Revenue was Harekrishna Konar who was a veteran peasant leader. In an interview with his party mouthpiece Ganashakti, he made his intentions clear about the quick distribution of surplus land and he further asked for peasant initiative and organized force. What he did not realize was that the aspirations of the poor peasantry were already on a high note and his invitation escalated them further. As the later developments showed they went far beyond his expectations. Although there were no doubts about the intentions of the leftists in the government about the redistribution, the path to achieve the goals was not that simple. There were some constraints before government. To name a few first they were not sure about how to recover the land from the landlords. Second the landlords could take the help of law to delay the seizure of land and thus postpone the redistribution for an indefinite period. Third was the working of the bureaucracy. There were some instances of even defying the orders of the ministers. As a result of these obstacles, the government could not implement the land reforms quickly. The CPI (M) was in a difficult situation because it was in the power so it could not totally do away the legal and official procedure and on the other hand the aspirations of the peasantry had to be satisfied. Everyone was not happy with government policy of redistributing the land through legal process. One of such prominent figures was Charu Mazumdar who was attacking Harekrishna Konar on three accounts. The first point was that he submitted to the bureaucrats and feudal gentry. The second point was that there might be disputes among the peasants who acquired the land through legal process and those who got it through forceful means. The third point was that the peasants who would acquire the land through legal process might eventually become a complacent middle farmer. Developments at Naxalbari: In this light a peasants’ conference was held under the auspices of CPI (M) at Naxalbari and it gave a call for ending the monopoly ownership of land by landlords, organization and arming of peasants to destroy the resistance of landlords. Among the sponsors of the conference were Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal who later became prominent leaders of the Naxalbari movement. Both of them were in favor of political propaganda and mass mobilization what was opposed by Charu Mazumdar. He wanted only action. So there were some differences on the part of the strategy to be followed but they were clear on many points such as that India’s liberation could be achieved only through China’s path, propagation of politics of agrarian struggle among the working class and the peasantry and building up a secret party to prepare cadres for this purpose. As a result of those differences pointed out already, Siliguri Local committee cadres decided to go on the path of mass movements whereas West Dinajpur unit decided to stick to the idea of Charu babu. Now the mobilization started on a large scale. From March to April (1967) all the villages of the Naxalbari were organized and 15000 to 20000 peasants were enrolled as whole time activists. They soon occupied the land in the name of peasants’ committees, burnt all land records, cancelled all hypothetical debts, and passed death sentences on oppressive landlords. They also formed armed bands by looting guns from the landlords, armed themselves with conventional weapons and set up a parallel administration to look after the villages. By May of that year itself three or four places were totally under the control of rebels. In the meantime Charu babu addressed a meeting of the cadres and asked them to always be on the side of the poor and landless peasant. He said that our relation with rich farmers would always be of struggling nature. Observing that the situation going out of control UF government woke up and Harekrishna Konar was sent to the Naxalbari region and he asked the rebels to put down their arms and file the petition for the distribution of land vested with the government. It was also agreed that the all the persons wanted by Police would also surrender. But the agreement was never implemented. Just after the return of minister from that place, a Police camp was established there. In the wake of these developments the first serious clash between Police and the peasants occurred on 23 May 1967, when a policeman was killed and in retaliation police opened fire on a crowd of villagers and killed nine people. Out of them six were women and two were children. This incident created tensions within and outside the United Front government. The West Bengal Secretariat condemned the incident and accused Chief Minister Ajoy Mukherjee, an ex-Congressman of laying ‘one sided stress on police measures to maintain law and order’. Meanwhile news of clashes between peasants and landlords kept pouring in from Naxalbari and between 3rd and 10th of June. There were as many as eighty incidents of dacoity, two murders and also one abduction. Mr. B. Chavan Union Home Minister told the Lok Sabha that a reign of terror has been created in Darjeeling. By the end of June while the leadership of CPI (M) was openly against the Naxalbari rebels. In Calcutta several groups within and outside CPI (M) were coming together. These groups formed the Naxalbari Peasants’ Struggle Aid Committee, which became a nucleus of separate party of the future. CPI (M) expelled 19 members in the light of the formation of the committee. In the meantime some other important developments were also taking place. On 28th June Radio Peking supported the movement and dubbed the United Front government as a ‘tool of Indian reactionaries to deceive the people’. This was the first incident of Chinese support to rebels and of Peking’s disenchantment with CPI (M). On 12th July a major police action was launched. Although Chief Minister claimed that it was cabinet’s decision, but CPI (M) tried to dissociate itself from the police action. The Chief Minister also came under attack. By 20th July the prominent leaders like Jangal Santhal were arrested and by October 1967 an apparent lull was set in Naxalbari. Assessment of the Naxalbari Movement and causes for its failure: Coming to the evaluation of the Naxalbari Movement, we should keep in mind that although it was a moderate success it was suppressed within a few months. It enjoyed immense mass support, but it could not sustain for a long period of time. There are mainly two versions for the failure of the movement. One is from the point of view of Kanu Sanyal and other one is from the point of view of supporters of Charu Mazumdar. Kanu Sanyal’s in his famous Report on the Terai Peasants’ Movement has penned down some of the reasons. The main reason according to him was excessive reliance on the spontaneity of the masses and taking them as armed forces. Among the other reasons were the inclusion of some vagabonds and making them leaders of the movement. Lack of proper plan for the redistribution of grabbed land led to conflicts among the peasants. But according to him the main defect was failure to establish a powerful mass base. Talking about military weakness of the movement, Sanyal admitted that the revolutionaries underrated the strength of the State machinery and thought that United Front Government would not go to the extent of suppressing the movement.

Jyoti Basu: An obituary

Jyoti Basu, politician, born 8 July 1914; died 17 January 2010. RIP.

A lot has been written about Jyoti Basu since his demise on 17 Jan 2010. Almost all of these articles/columns have either heaped praises on Basu and glorified him, or they have been scathing indictment of Basu for letting down Calcutta & Bengal. Either way, these have been very biased in some way or the other.

To attempt to deny Basu his due as a leader of National importance is not only foolish, but also falls flat on its face when confronted with facts. The very fact that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rushed to Kolkata on Thursday to pay a visit to the AMRI hospital where Basu was battling for life speaks volumes about the communist patriarch’s relevance in Indian politics. As a matter of fact,the PM postponed the pre-scheduled Cabinet meeting to be able to visit Basu. Moreover,the Prime Minister offered to fly in experts from anywhere in India to treat Basu, if required.

Basu, even in seclusion forced by failing health, remained the poster boy of Indian communism. He was always the biggest crowd-puller for the CPI(M).The anxiety of his followers, the tears, the flurry of media activities outside the hospital and the air-dashing political royalty, mainly those from rival political outfits, vouch for it.

Jyoti Kiran Basu (the middle name was quickly dropped) was born into a well-to-do Hindu family. His father, a respectable doctor, was later horrified by Jyoti's choice of a political career, and even more by his choice of party. But the boy's early years were comfortably uneventful. He was educated in private schools and graduated from Presidency College, Kolkata, before sailing to Britain in 1935 to study law.

There, he became fascinated by leftist theory and practice. He attended lectures by Harold Laski, and got involved with the Communist Party of Great Britain. He wanted to join the party, but was dissuaded by its general secretary Harry Pollitt, who knew the young Indian could get into hot water if he returned to the British Raj as a known communist. Still, there was plenty of political work to do in London: Basu agitated for independence, and acted as a fixer for visiting dignatories, including Jawaharlal Nehru, arranging for them to meet leaders of the Labour party and the wider socialist movement.

Having qualified as a barrister at the Middle Temple, Basu returned to Kolkata in 1940. Almost immediately, he plunged into politics, becoming an organiser for the Communist Party of India (CPI), with the task of spreading the word among railway workers. It is a measure of his industry and effectiveness that he soon became general secretary of the rail workers' union.

In the meantime, British rule in the subcontinent was passing none too peacefully to its close. Basu, briefly imprisoned in 1945, was elected to the Bengal legislative assembly in 1946, the year before independence and partition, and immediately became leader of the communist opposition to the ruling Congress party. In the rough and tumble of West Bengal politics, Basu was an astute tactician, but he remained an essentially provincial politician with little prospect of advancement.

That changed in 1964, when the CPI underwent a dramatic split. It is often represented as a schism between nationalists who staunchly supported India in the brief but disastrous border war with China in 1962, and those who believed that it had been a war between socialism and capitalism. In reality it was a left-right split, with Basu in the former camp. He became chief of the CPM in West Bengal. At the last count there were at least 15 communist parties in India, ranging from mild left to raving revolutionary, but only the CPI and the CPM really count electorally.

Under Basu, the CPM built a formidable, some would say ruthless, state apparatus. It was denied victory in the state elections of 1972, which were shamelessly rigged by the even more ruthless Congress machine, but was swept to power in 1977.

Over the following 23 years, Basu achieved much, and failed quite often too. He brought reform to a largely feudal landscape, and his redistribution of land-wealth made him electorally invincible. Even better, he brought stability to a previously chaotic state. But rural reform was paralleled by urban stagnation. Kolkata remains the most lovable of Indian cities, but communist rule has denied it the new prosperity visible in other centres such as Delhi and Mumbai (Bombay). Nowhere is the stultifying effect of the regime more evident than in the Writers' Building, a relic not just of the Raj but of the East India Company, where legions of clerks, peons and other penpushers juggle endlessly with crumbling heaps of forms, dockets, chits and files, to no apparent purpose.

Basu remained an idol to the working class and rural peasantry, but in the end became a symbol of the statism which is so despised by today's MBA-brandishing classes. Had he become prime minister in 1996, he might well have restored prestige to that much-damaged office, through his honesty and other old-fashioned virtues. On the other hand, his instinct for hands-on control might have brought India's modern boom to a shuddering halt.

A steadfastly private man, Basu married twice. His first wife died after only 16 months of marriage. He had a long and happy second marriage with Kamal who predeceased him. They both doted on their son Chandan, who survives him.