A Dangerous Convergence

September 1, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Pratyush Chandra

Prominent sociologist 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 with his frank anti-worker statements is undoubtedly in his brigade. In his anti-communist verbosity displayed in the article 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) – 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 recent 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 to curb grassroots militancy. But both converge at a dangerous moment.

Yes, Prof Gupta, you are right – that really hurts!

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Delhi Domestic Workers Union

August 27, 2008 by 5 Comments

The Delhi Shramik Sangathan, a federation of Construction Workers Union & Car Cleaners Union along with its constituent organization Delhi Domestic Workers Union jointly organized a rally on Tuesday, 26th, Aug’08 at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. Around 1500 domestic workers attended the rally and submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister, Labour Ministry and the Lok Sabha Speaker.

DSS Rally 1

DSS Rally 2

DSS Rally 3

The rally was addressed by several eminent political leaders, Union leaders, scholars and social activists.

DSS Rally 4

Anita Juneja, convener of Delhi Domestic workers unions welcome the participants at rally and urged the domestic workers of Delhi to increase the pace of the movement so that domestic workers could become a political forces to reckon with. She said that around seven-eight lakh strong workforce of domestic workers in the city is working at paltry sums of Rs 1200 – 1500 per month and live in semi-human conditions of bondage and starvation. They are victims of constant verbal and sexual abuse without any grievance redressal mechanism. Worsening their situation is the city administration’s brutal eviction drive – dislocating and destabilizing the lives of the very people without whom the city would come to a crippling halt. This disruption of people’s lives has led to children being the worst victims with an absolute denial of basic health care and education. Spending the meagre resources available to them to tackle continuous illness, the children by the age of ten are also forced to join as domestic help to contribute to the paltry income of the family. In the absence of any provision of maternity benefit, pension, ESI, PF, Gratuity, health facilities, crèche at work site etc these workers are forced to continue with no security of work.

DSS Rally 5
DSS Rally 6

The union along with Nirmala Niketan approached the National Commission of Women (NCW) to raise the issue at the national level. A subcommittee was formed by NCW to draft the bill on Regulation of Employment & Working Condition of Domestic Workers. The draft prepared was discussed during the National Consultation on Domestic workers organized by NCW on 14th-15th of March’08 at New Delhi. The recommendations of the consultation have been finalized. Now the recommendations need to be incorporated in the Bill drafted by the Sub-Committee of NCW and the final shape of the Bill need to be sent to the Central Government as recommendations of the NCW.

DSS Rally 7

Details of the NCW proposal

Under the proposed law a tripartite Board is to be formed by the State & Union Territories governments. This Board will register all employers, domestic workers and Placement Agencies. Board will collect its fund mainly from the registration of employers. Rs.1000 per year will be collected from the employer of live-in full time domestic Worker and Rs.200 per year from the employer of part time domestic Worker, which will add to about rupees one hundred crore rupees per annum in Delhi alone. In addition the Board will collect a nominal fee of Rs.100 per annum from the live-in full time domestic worker and Rs 20 per year from the part time domestic worker. Rs.100 per placement per year will be collected from the placement agencies besides a lump sum fees and security amount depending upon the number of annual placement done by an Agency.

DSS Rally 8

The Board will provide an identity Card, bank account, regular medical check up, shelter in crisis & sickness, provide working conditions, dispute regulation, regulation of placement agency, keep full record of domestic workers which will check and prevent child labor in domestic work and help in tracing trafficked girls to prevent trafficking for domestic work.

The demand of the Domestic workers is to accept Domestic Work as ‘Work’ and Domestic Worker as ‘Workers’ and lend it the dignity and reorganization of labor. Consequently all benefits and rights that accrue to workers must be extended to this huge workforce (of which no census statistics are available) so far unprotected by any labor legislation. Minimum labor standards should be applied to achieve decent conditions of work and a living wage by including domestic workers as unorganized sector worker as the Central Government representatives assured the Supreme Court of India in a PIL on behalf of Domestic Workers.

DSS Rally 9

The rally demanded that –

1. The legislation proposed by the National Commission for Women be called The Domestic Workers (Regulation and Conditions of Employment & Welfare) Act;

2. The Domestic Worker Act should provide for compulsory registration of Employers, Domestic Workers and all service providers, including placement agents/Agencies and contractors;

3. The Tripartite Boards of Domestic Workers should constitute State/District level Committees for complain against sexual harassment at work place which should also provide protection for women going about to work as Domestic Workers;

4. Domestic Workers should also be registered at the source area and regulation of employment along with ID cards be done, also at source;

5. Minimum age of employment should be 16 years;

6. Tripartite Boards of Domestic Worker to be set up to regulate employment conditions, social security and welfare measures. The board should be authorized to constitute dispute resolution councils and Appellate Authorities;

7. Tripartite Board of Domestic Worker should have 50% representative of Domestic Workers directly elected by the registered domestic workers and 25% representatives of related department of Central and States Governments such as Labor, Child and Women Welfare, SC/ST Welfare, Social Welfare etc. and 25% representatives of employers and Resident Welfare Associations;

8. Tripartite Boards of Domestic Workers should be authorized to formulate guidelines for regulating employment and working conditions for domestic workers going outside India as domestic workers and provide social security to them;

9. All Labor laws to apply including Minimum wages Act, Payment of wages Act, Workmen’s’ compensation act, Accidents benefit Act, etc. and any such legislations applicable to industrial workers;

10. Tripartite Boards of Domestic Workers will be authorized to file complains/FIR etc. on behalf of Domestic Workers where the Domestic Workers is not in a position to file a complain;

11. Rights to inspection of workplace and living space by individuals / groups / organizations as assigned by the Tripartite Board of Domestic Workers;

12. Tripartite Boards of Domestic Workers will primarily depend upon the registration fees collected from Employers, Domestic Worker and Placement Agencies but till enough fees is collected the government must make adequate budgetary provisions for implementing the Act either as grants or loan.

Contact Address: c/o- Flat No-231, Pocket-A, Sector-13, Ph-II, Dwarka, New Delhi-110075. Ph-011-28031792; email- delhidss@gmail.com

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Orissa Matters

August 27, 2008 by 2 Comments

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

1. RELIGIOUS REVIVALISM BECOMES BLOODY

A stalwart of Hindu religious revivalism Laxmanananda Saraswati has been shot dead while resting in a female child asylum at Tumudibandha of Kandhamal district along with five others at about 8.30 in the evening of August 23.

RSS alleges that Christian religious fanatics have killed Laxmananand who was very active in foiling their attempts to Christianize the tribals and hence was in their hit list.

Orissa has experienced a lot of communal conflict due to religious revivalism. Laxmanananda was a known agent provocateur whom the Law and order authorities a few months ago had prohibited to enter into Phulbani in order to contain communal carnages.

Plutocracy, ushered into India by Manmohan Singh infested Congress and pampered by profiteers’ political organ BJP, is eager to keep the jungle-dweller tribes subdued forever as it is only they, who can valiantly resist the spread of industry and trade that needs to grab their land and to destroy their environment to proceed and profit.

Therefore plutocracy is apprehensive of a tribal uprising, specifically as, abandoned by mainstream politicians and exploited by local bureaucrats and middlemen and contractors and moneylenders and traders, they have got a strong ally in the left-wing ultras that the exploiters and their pet media go on projecting as Naxals or Maoists. The left-wing ultras have given the tribes their voice to raise demands for their economic rights and as evidenced in spread of Naxal influence from district to district, the poor peoples’ voice of demand for their economic right is stronger day by day. This is fidgeting the scoundrels that are exploiting the peoples.

As this new phase of peoples uprising is getting more defined, the precipitators of plutocracy are using a two-pronged strategy. One, they are using state exchequer to instigate armed forces to annihilate the left-wing ultras in blatant contravention of the civil laws in force and two, they are encouraging religious revivalists to confuse peoples into the fold of fate so that plutocracy gets a good shock-absorber to surge ahead. This is why in Orissa’s tribal areas where left-wing ultras are active, religious revivalists are seen aggressively active.

When the armed forces engaged against left-wing ultras are not ready to block the poor peoples’ demand for economic rights, the religious revivalists are intrinsic to plutocracy and are active supporters of plutocratic power play as plutocracy for survival fully depends on existence of God or Gods that the religious revivalists create, propagate and protect.

So religious revivalism is a political game aimed at putting exploiters in power. No game is a game if rivals are not there. Naturally therefore, there is bitter rivalry between the Christian and Hindu fanatics in Kandhamal and similar other places. Hindu religious chauvinists are marked for their support to Indian capitalists when Christian religious fanatics are active collaborators of foreign capitalist interest in India. There rivalry is not religious but in the guise of religion it in reality is a politico-economic rivalry that in other words may be said as national versus international rivalry in serving the system of exploitation. No wonder, it is bitter.

This bitter rivalry has led to death of Laxmanananda. If anybody is to take note of this, it is the religious revivalist of all hue, primarily.

They should note that if their foul play against poor people in the name of religion does not stop, time will come, no God would come to their rescue as Laxmananand’s God has notably failed to save him. As dinosaurs supposedly killed each other and got extinct, the religious revivalists would kill each other as bloody stooges of politico-economic rivals both in the national and international arenas.

Orissa’s Tumuribandha may just be the beginning.

2. LAXMANANANDA’S POSTHUMOUS MISUSE BY ADVANI AND CNN-IBN

BJP leader L.K.Advani and media organization CNN-IBN have preferred Hindu sectarian leader Laxmanananda’s posthumous misuse against Leftist ultras through premature assertions that Naxals have killed him, when, his own organization Viswa Hindu Parisad that is supposed to know where the shoe really pinched has declared that it is the Christian fanatics who are the real killers.

Both the assertions are premature and irresponsible specifically as the matter is under active investigation by rightful authorities.

We have earlier discussed that religious revivalism that has ruined the peace and tranquility of tribal belt is meant to counter Naxal influence by pushing peoples into the labyrinth of fate so that they can tolerate economic exploitation by accepting their wretchedness as the result of sins they might have committed in previous birth. So religious revivalism, conversions and counter-conversions and acrimonious sectarian quarrels practiced by both the Hindu and Christian chauvinists are not meant for making peoples religious but are promoted by Indian capitalism and American imperialism to stop evolution of exploited peoples’ conscious rising for their economic rights by blocking the spread of Naxal influence. In other words, rival religion practitioners are not their enemy; the real enemy is the Naxal organization. Therefore, Advani was quite eager to attribute Laxmanananda’s annihilation to the Naxals only.

Naxals are known as politically aggressive advocates of wretchedly poor and blatantly exploited peoples’ economic rights. Therefore to oppose them is a clear act of exploitive political activism. Advani is an exploitive political activist. When peoples of Orissa had raised the first ever Indian mass movement against deliberate price rise by profiteers and hoarders and blackmarketeers in the early eighties, Advani had instigated marwadis to observe Diwali as ‘Black Diwali” in protest against the Orissan movement. So there is nothing unusual in his attempts to make propaganda that Naxals have killed Laxmanananda. And he has not done any wrong by that, because that is the right way in pursuit of his political creed and nothing other than that is expected of him. In doing this he has just extended the mission of Laxmanananda in a political way that he is supposed to do as a right wing politician.

But why a media organization like CNN-IBN has ignored the minimum professional discipline needed in such cases and shown so eagerness to use Laxmanananda posthumously against the Naxals?

Conduct of this organization in cash for confidence vote matter exposed recently is yet alive in mass memory. Therefore it attracts suspicion in matter of its motive in trading this most premature but prejudiced propaganda that Naxals have killed Laxmanananda, the master craftsman of counter-conversions so dear to Hindu ultras.

Advani and this media organization look like close collaborators in frustrating the peoples who love democracy, peace and tranquility and want inequality to honorably end.

Subhash Chandra Pattanayak is a senior Oriya journalist and litterateur

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Anti-Maoism, McCarthyism and the Indian State

August 26, 2008 by 2 Comments

Pratyush Chandra

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 (1), 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 McCarthyite era in the US had the Rosenbergs and others) to terrorise the “educated elite”. Hence, we have Binayak Sen, Ajay TG… And the list is daily growing.

What is anyway McCarthyism? Truman, not a leftist by any means, defined it as “the corruption of truth, the abandonment of the due process of law. It is the use of the big lie and the unfounded accusation against any citizen in the name of Americanism or security. It is the rise to power of the demagogue who lives on untruth; it is the spreading of fear and the destruction of faith in every level of society.”

So with the ideologies of Indianism/Hinduism and security defining every move of the Indian state, aren’t we in the same situation?

Should we be surprised by the National Human Rights Commission’s submission to the Supreme Court regarding Salwa Judum’s atrocities leaked to 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.

Isn’t this their “truth”, or Truman’s “corruption of truth”?

References:

(1) An interview with MK Narayanan, The Straits Times.

(2) NHRC gives thumbs-up to Salwa Judum movement, The Economic Times, August 26 2008.

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Not a CIA agent but a Red-Baiter

August 24, 2008 by 1 Comment

Ravi Kumar

One can have criticisms of the way Indian Left has not defended the cause of the working class. But such a criticism could come only from someone committed to the working class struggle. However, there are many other forms of criticisms too. One such criticism has recently been forwarded by Ramachandra Guha, a respected intellectual.

A self besotted concluding line that “I run the risk of being labelled a CIA agent” demonstrates how Ramachandra Guha, in an Independence Day special issue of the magazine Outlook, operates within the discourse of labelling and counter-labelling. In the whole article he has not posed anything beyond the commonsensical right-to-centre arguments against the communist left, which we heard during the recent parliamentary discussions on the “Confidence Motion” – because the left and the right were opposing the same motion, hence they are the same.

Critiquing the politics of the Left after understanding its sources – the material conditions which gives rise to a certain form of politics – is another thing and making superficial and immature remarks is something else. His ‘analysis’ finds similarity with the superfluous analysis that we come across in favour of market, and the ideology that sustains and perpetuates the domination of market. He picks up statements and incidences and does a hasty analysis of the ‘apparent’.

In this piece what Guha does is that he makes far-reaching comments on the Indian Left as well as the Right. Often he equates the two by showing them as ultimately sharing similar understanding about the West or on issues such as culture.

He finds the Right and the Left talking in the same language and sums it up by saying that “There are statements issued by the Swadeshi Jagran Manch that could have come straight from the pages of People’s Democracy” (p.64). While commonality of opposition to liberalisation is understood, but one needs to understand the vantage point from which both the political forces approach the issue of liberalisation of Indian economy.

A general comment often made is that Indian left unreasonably attacks the West and it has been seen once again in the recent opposition to the nuclear deal. Guha advances such an argument when he conclusively points out that: “At any rate, the thinkers and activist of the Hindu Right and the Communist Left are united in thinking that the bulk of India’s problems were created or caused by the West”. Once again he fails to locate the analysis put forth by the Left in its opposition to imperialism or rampage by neoliberal capital. He forgets that its opposition, in most of the cases, have emerged against capitalist expansionism.

He tells us that the “for the Left, their political models too are wholly western – Marx and Engels and Lenin were as European as they come. Besides, their political practice has often been tailored to the needs of foreign (if not necessarily western) powers…” One cannot restrain oneself from calling this a slogan-mongering very similar to that of the rabid Right against the “Un-Indian” communist left.

The arguments of Guha emanate from the same place as the justifications for sustaining and expanding the rule of capital. He celebrates the spirit of individualism and fractures the system to pick up analytical categories that would further the idea that it is not the current order of things and its inherent character that creates problems but rather some components of the system. Hence, neoliberal capitalism never becomes responsible for growing inequality or widening income disparity, or it is not the global capitalism’s dynamics operationalised through its various agencies that sustain inequities and design ways and means to sustain capitalism in his argument. Flaws are attributed to individual Indians, individual ministers etc., who are not seen as influenced by others but rather seen as autonomous agents, who carry out actions on their own.

In fact his elitist (school-boyish) trivialization of arguments against neoliberal commodification is very typical – he opposed the Miss World contest because “cricket-illiterate young women” were seen in his favourite cricket ground. Further, “Indian classical music is now more popular than it was before liberalisation. The arrival of kfc has been contemporaneous with a rise in demand for tandoori chicken.” And Guha is satisfied.

Ultimately, Ramachandra Guha runs the risk of being labelled one among many trivial red-baiters, not a CIA agent. But we know he hardly cares…

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Krugman’s “great illusion”

August 17, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Pratyush Chandra

Economist Paul Krugman in his latest column in NY Times (Aug 15, 2008) entitled “The Great Illusion” expresses his concern at the possibility that “the second great age of globalization may share the fate of the first”. And it is the recent Russia-Georgia conflict that makes him say so. To be more explicit he goes on to explain that “our grandfathers lived in a world of largely self-sufficient, inward-looking national economies — but our great-great grandfathers lived, as we do, in a world of large-scale international trade and investment, a world destroyed by nationalism.”

Krugman’s above statement clearly shows his lack of any historical sense. When was that “world of large-scale international trade and investment” free of (militarist) nationalism – a mechanism to protect that “large-scaleness”? And much of the “nationalism” which destroyed that world was in fact a revolt against that “large-scale” militarism. Yes, it destroyed the Pax Britannica – it was a war against the war monopoly.

On the one hand, Krugman seems to tell that national self-sufficiency at least with regard to “the current food crisis” is at last clearly shown to be not “an outmoded concept”. But he is in fact accusing nationalism of “many governments” for “leaving food-importing countries in dire straits”. He further finds that there is a rise of “militarism and imperialism” as “it does mark the end of the Pax Americana — the era in which the United States more or less maintained a monopoly on the use of military force. And that raises some real questions about the future of globalization”. Obviously, for him, “Russian energy” and Chinese big economy are the real threats as they have the capacity to manipulate world polities and economies to submission.

Then what is the Pax Americana? Is it not militarism, imperialism and manipulation, that we witnessed throughout the 1990s and afterwards? When did war-mongering and militarist build-up end during the “Pax Americana”? Increasing manipulative capacities of other countries and their political economy at the most demonstrate a globalization of “militarism and imperialism”.

Krugman rightly questions those analysts who “tell us not to worry: global economic integration itself protects us against war, they argue, because successful trading economies won’t risk their prosperity by engaging in military adventurism”. He thinks “the foundations of the second global economy” are solid than those of the first only “in some ways”, “[f]or example, war among the nations of Western Europe really does seem inconceivable now, not so much because of economic ties as because of shared democratic values”. So euro-centric Krugman, like Stiglitz, ultimately thinks the West not to be adventurist because of its democracy, but ah! “much of the world, however, including nations that play a key role in the global economy, doesn’t share those values”. So does he think the Pax Americana to which the West has submitted is about peace and democracy, which is now being threatened by the despotic Orient?

Krugman rightly concludes that “the belief that economic rationality always prevents war is an equally great illusion”. But like any other ordinary bourgeois he thinks economic rationality can prevent war when coupled with “democratic” values of the West. Obviously he can’t see the fact that economic rationality is about competition, representative democracy is about competition, and a war is competition par excellence. They are all ultimately the same – diverse moments in the life of “social capital”(1). Krugman refuses to recognize that capital whether protected by democratic regimes or not is at constant war against labour – which needs to be divided and controlled if it is to be exploited – and Western xenophobic megalomaniac nationalisms have always been nurtured for this reason. Where is the country in the West free from state-sponsored Ku-klux-klanesque policies and activism against migrants and “the other”? The neo-capitalist regimes have learned their lessons properly – obviously at the cost of threatening the established monopolies. It is not an end of globalization, as Krugman prognosticates, but a new stage – and a more barbaric stage – of capitalist globalization.

Note:

(1) “Here social capital is not just the total capital of society: it is not the simple sum of individual capitals. It is the whole process of socialization of capitalist production: it is capital itself that becomes uncovered, at a certain level of its development, as social power”. (Mario Tronti (1971), “Social Capital“)

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Book Review: Colombia, Laboratory of Witches

August 12, 2008 by Leave a Comment

James Petras

Hernando Calvo Ospina’s recent book, Colombia, laboratorio de embrujos: Democracia y terrorismo de Estado (Colombia, Laboratory of Witches: Democracy and State Terrorism) is the most important study of Colombian politics in recent decades and essential reading in light of the Western media’s and politicians’ celebration of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. Calvo Ospina’s study provides a wealth of historical and empirical data that highlights Colombia’s peculiar combination of electoral politics characteristic of a Western capitalist democracy and the permanent purge of civil and political society characteristic of totalitarian dictatorships.
book
Unlike most Latin American countries, Colombia has never experienced the modernization of its political system. Since the 19th century Liberal and Conservative parties run by urban and rural oligarchies have controlled the political process through violence and patronage.

Middle and working class ‘radical’ and center-left parties in Colombia have been violently repressed and marginalized, in contrast to the political differentiation, which took place in Chile and Argentina in the early 20th century. No labor or social democratic or Marxist parties were allowed to secure representation and legitimacy unlike the experience in Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia or elsewhere in Sough America. The ‘two party system’ based on oligarchic family elites were ill prepared to accommodate and accept the challenges of the burgeoning urban working class and rural peasant movements of the post-World War period. In Colombia resistance to plural social representation and to a multi-party system reflecting lower class interests took the form of civil war – la violencia – as the Liberal and Conservative Parties resorted to massive blood letting in the 1950’s to resolve which of the two factions of the ruling class would rule. The result was a bi-partisan pact to alternate the presidency between the two parties. The key theoretical point is that the unity of the Colombian elite was based on rule through mass violence, social exclusion and the monopoly of political power.

Colombia’s failed ‘transition to modernity’ was based exclusively on the selective introduction of Western institutions of counter-insurgency by a traditional oligarchy devoted to the politics of mass exclusion. The historical legacy of oligarchic party continuity and mass violence provides the framework for the contemporary practice of elections and death squads.

Calvo Ospina’s study provides detailed accounts explaining the pervasive influence of the US government in Colombian politics. The entire senior officer corps with command of troops and control of strategic intelligence agencies have passed through US military and indoctrination programs. In fact, attendance and certification by US military programs are a necessary step up the career ladder. Central to these training programs is ‘counter-insurgency’; training Colombian officials to violently repress any mass movements which challenge the Colombian oligarchy allied with Washington. The strategies taught by the US military instructors include the recruitment and arming of paramilitary death squads; ambitions junior military officers are pre-selected by the US military for their political loyalty to the US and aptitude for engaging in war against the Left and the mass movements led by their own compatriots. Calvo Ospina provides numerous ‘case studies’ of Colombian generals who follow this ‘career path’: From selection and training in the US ‘advanced’ military training schools, to command of troops, to protectors and promoters of death squads, to authors of multiple massacres against civilians, to recipients of numerous decorations from Colombian presidents and visiting US political and military dignitaries (page 213).

Calvo Ospina’s study synthesizes a wealth of testimony, documents, news reports, eye witness accounts and human rights investigations detailing the organic links between the Colombian government (including the Uribe cabinet) over 60 members of Colombia’s congress (allied to Uribe), right-wing governors and mayors and the 30,000 strong death squads, the principle of which was Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia ( United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia). In fact, the rise of Uribe from Governor of Antioquia to the Presidency was linked to his ties with the death squads (page 235). Calvo Ospina’s study demolishes claims that the ‘death squads’ operate independently of the state. Not only are the death squads an arm of the state, but they also play a major role in linking the oligarchy and the political elite to the multi-billion dollar narcotics trade. The study provides us with a clear account of the complex network of inter-locking elites made up of the Colombian ruling class, the US imperial apparatus and the Colombian military. While the death squads played a major role in the killing of thousands of popular leaders and dispossessing 3 million peasants, they received the support of the Colombian oligarchy. Once the military and the regime, with $5 billion USD in US military aid, took possession of disputed regions from the guerrillas, the death squads were in part demobilized. The growth and decline of the death squads was clearly a result of US and Colombian policy: They were ‘tactical’ instruments designed to carry out the bloodiest tasks of purging civil society of popular, mass-based opposition. Calvo Ospina’s detailed survey of the horrific human rights record of the first 5 years of Uribe’s rule stands in stark contrast to the barrage of favorable propaganda showered on the macabre figure after freeing Franco-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt by Bush, Sarkozy, Zapatero, Chavez, and Castro among others. During the first 3 years of the Uribe Presidency (August 2002- December 31, 2005) over one million Colombians were forcibly displaced, the great majority peasants violently uprooted and dispossessed of their land and homes by the death squads/military, who subsequently seized their land under the pretext of eliminating potential supporters of the FARC and other social movements. The peasants-turned-urban-squatters, who became local leaders, subsequently were assassinated by the regime’s secret political police (DAS) or death squads. Uribe’s regime has murdered over 500 trade union activists and leaders since coming to power in 2003. One trade union leader succinctly summed up the dismal political choices for Colombian activists: “In Colombia its easier to organize a guerrilla (movement) than a trade union. Anyone who doubts that should try to organize one at their workplace” (page 348). According to the European Union, more than 300 human rights activists were murdered by the Uribe regime in its first term of office (page 349). In the first two years of his regime, Uribe was responsible for the assassination or ‘disappearance’ of 6,148 unarmed civilians in non-combat circumstances.

The use of paramilitary death squads promoted/financed and protected by the Uribe regime to murder and ‘disappear’ popular leaders serves several strategic political goals: It allows the regime to lower the number of human rights abuses attributed to the Colombian Armed Forces; it facilitates the extensive use of extreme terror tactics – public amputation and display of dismembered corpses – to intimidate entire communities (psychological warfare); it creates the myth that the regime is ‘centrist’ – opposed by the ‘extreme left’ (FARC) and the ‘extreme right’ (death squads, especially the AUC). This claim is particularly effective in furthering the regime’s diplomatic relations in the US and Europe, providing a convenient alibi for liberals and social democrats who provide Colombia with military and economic aid.

Calvo Ospina’s study of US-Colombian relations provides useful insights into the mutual benefits to Colombia’s ruling class and the empire. The death squads (sicarios) were originally organized by the Colombian elites to destroy peasant movements pursuing agrarian reform. With the massive entry of $6 billion USD in US military aid and several thousands US Special Forces, the death squads expanded from scattered, decentralized local killers into centralized 30,000 strong extension of US and Colombian counter-insurgency forces. They were oriented exclusively to exterminating villages and social organizations in guerrilla-influenced regions. Calvo Ospina’s study highlights the central role of the Colombian ruling class as well as the US military in the growth of the totalitarian terrorist state. His study clearly rejects the simplistic view of many on the Left who see oppression, exploitation and terror simply as impositions by ‘outside forces’ (imperialism). The theoretical point is that the US military’s entry, expansion and influential role was possible because it coincided with the long-term, large-scale interests and needs of the Colombian ruling class.

The most important contribution of Calvo Ospina’s study of Colombian politics is his account of the construction and elaboration of a totalitarian terrorist regime, with the open collaboration and support of US, European and Latin American capitalist democracies.

The infrastructure of totalitarian terror defines the boundaries, content and participants of electoral politics. It includes: Rule by Presidential decrees suspending all constitutional guarantees (page 295); A nationwide secret police network of 1.6 million spies (page 296); Peasants forcibly recruited and forced to act as local military collaborators (“Soldiers of My People”) in 500 of Colombia’s 1,096 municipalities; 30,000 military-trained and armed death squad paramilitary forces; 300,000 active military forces, the DAS (Departamento Administrativo de Seguidad – Security Administrative Department) – the secret police numbering in the tens of thousands. The private militias of landowners, bankers and business leaders involving private security agencies number over 150,000 gunmen.

Colombia is the most militarized country in Latin America. The Congress, electorate, judiciary and civil service exercise no effective control. The constitutional protections are totally non-existent. The scope and depth of human rights violations exceed those of any military dictatorship in recent Latin American history, including those in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia.

The totalitarian terrorist infrastructure of the state defines the political character of the political system. The electoral process serves exclusively as a façade facilitating ‘normal relations’ with liberal, conservative and social democratic regimes in Europe and North and South America. In effect their praise and support of Uribe in the aftermath of the Betancourt affair served to legitimize the terrorist regime. Their condemnation of the FARC was also a rejection of the anti-totalitarian and anti-terrorist left.

While Calvo Ospina’s study has deepened our understanding of the structure and practice of contemporary totalitarian terrorist regimes, there is a need to proceed further to examine the emerging mass base of support for the regime. Uribe mobilized over one million Colombians against the FARC in the spring of 2008 in support of his totalitarian regime, at a time when the mass media, the Colombian judiciary and former leaders of the death squads revealed that scores of pro-Uribe Congresspeople, Cabinet Ministers and Generals were linked to the AUC. In other words, hundreds of thousands of middle class Colombians knowingly embraced a totalitarian leader.

The emergence of mass-based totalitarianism, replacing the traditional authoritarian oligarchy, is part of the emergence of new virulent right-wing politics in Latin America. In Bolivia, the far-right Santa Cruz ruling class has combined a mass middle class base with its own ‘para-military’ shock forces in pursuit of ‘autonomy’ (secession) and control over the massive oil and gas revenues accruing from partnerships with foreign multinationals. In Argentina, the hard right in the provinces has built a mass base of several hundred thousand in defense of huge commodity profits. In Venezuela, the hard right can put several hundred thousand in the street and engages its own paramilitary shock troops.

The emergence of the totalitarian right coincides with the inability of the ‘center-left’ and the left to capitalize on the commodity boom to finance structural changes and organize the working and rural poor into ‘fighting forces’.

In Colombia, the center-left (Polo Democrático) has generally sided with the Uribe right against the FARC – and in the process given a powerful impetus to the regime’s attraction of the mass urban middle class. The ‘center left’ regimes’ embrace of agro-mineral export strategies in the rest of Latin America have immobilized the masses and vastly increased the power of the new totalitarian right and encouraged their use of ‘direct action’ tactics. Far from Uribe’s Colombia being the ‘exception’ to a ‘progressive wave’ in Latin America, it is more realistic to view him as emblematic of the new totalitarian leaders who combine elections and political terrorism.

Colombia, as Calvo Ospina describes it, is indeed the ‘Laboratory of the Extreme Right’. Uribe’s success spells danger for the workers, peasant and popular movements of Latin America.

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Chhattisgarh and the danger of dissent

August 6, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Paramita Ghosh

If Ajay TG had been smart enough to know where to point his camera, his films might have been showing in Osian today. As it stands, he is in Durg jail, 40 km from Bhilai, where his uncle would sell tea and his father would sell chickens near the steel plant. He started making films 7-8 years ago, photographing, as he says, in a statement, “daily life, festivals and rituals of Durg and particularly my own neighborhood, an old village now surrounded by urban growth.” He would also make posters of poems and put them up in banks and other public places “to reach a wider public than that reached by poetry books.”

In Chhattisgarh, these are acts of terrorism.

This week, www.releaseajaytg.in, a website, was set up by a committee for his release. Playwright Habib Tanvir, activist Aruna Roy, professor Dr Kamal Chenoy, director ActionAid India, Harsh Mander, law expert Usha Ramanathan, journalist Siddharth Vardharajan, among others, are its members. Renowned film-maker Mrinal Sen who signed the petition condemning Ajay’s arrest, says: “I wish I was 30 years younger, so that I could have physically joined you all in this campaign.” “Chhattisgarh was always a peaceful place and it is a great shame that artists, film makers and journalists are being targeted in this state,” said Tanvir. “The voice of a creative person is being silenced again.”

There is a reason why Ajay TG’s story started moving in this direction.

His camera angles, to start with, were wrong. British photographer Margeret Dickinson who taught him the use of the camera, notes that, “even as a student, Ajay instinctively tended to opt for a non-authoritarian point of view when developing a film”. For example, when he made a short on malaria prevention, the story Ajay told was not from the point of view of a health campaigner but from that of village children confronted with a friend’s illness. This is a man who joins campaigns against child labour and has strong views on violence.

Ajay joined the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) in Bhilai, a leading civil rights organisation, as a voluntary member. Dr Binayak Sen, is its general secretary. Ajay starts making films on human-interest stories: on old-age homes, health, the politics of power in two adivasi melas. He also makes a film on Binayak Sen.

Are these crimes?

National Award winning cinematographer Rajan Palit asks whether the decision to investigate state terrorism creatively is enough to be branded a Maoist. “For the last 20 years, even civil society efforts in Chhattisgarh to protect land, water, culture and livelihood have been attacked,” agrees film-maker maker Amar Kanwar, who put together the committee for the film-maker’s release. “The message the police is sending out is — if you see something wrong with the system, do not make films about it. They are making sure, what people see, are not told.”

The objective of Ajay TG’s arrest is not Ajay TG. It is to tell everybody else that if you film and if you write, this is what will happen to you. It is to tell the local journalist, the local film-maker and the local poet to look elsewhere and clear out of the way.

paramitaghosh@hindustantimes.com

(This report was filed in Hindustan Times, 20th July. After 93 days in jail, film-maker Ajay TG who was released from Durg jail late Tuesday (August 5) evening, begins a life outside it – under constant watch.)

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Kosambi and the discourse of civilization

July 30, 2008 by 1 Comment

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya

The polymath’s most enduring and wide-ranging contribution to the interpretation of Indian history was his approach to the idea of India as a civilization.

D.D. Kosambi (1907-1966) was a polymath who made original contributions in diverse areas including pure mathematics, quantitative numismatics, Sanskrit studies, and ancient Indian history. But he is remembered today chiefly for his work as a historian. That is not without reason. That is where he made an enduring impact even if some details of his findings and observations may be open to question in the light of later research. If we try to situate his contribution to the interpretation of history, the most enduring and wide-ranging in significance appears to be his approach to the idea of India as a civilization.

When he wrote in 1965 his last major work, The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India, he gave a central place to the notion of civilization. He began with the question: what unifies Indian civilization amidst cultural diversities within? He goes on to ask: what explains “the continuity we find in India over the last three thousand years”? He underlines the importance of the “material foundation for Indian culture and civilization” and, in the concluding chapter, explores the reason why, in his judgment, the ancient civilization was destined to stagnate.

In posing such wide-ranging questions about the civilization in India, Kosambi differed from the general run of academic historians of his times for they rarely engaged in the discourse of civilizations. He was swimming against the current. The specialised and fragmented view in the academic historians’ professional writings did not usually add up to that vision of totality that the notion of civilization demands. The fact that Kosambi was never given his due by them in his lifetime can be, arguably, ascribed to their disdain for a non-professional who was not only an avowed Marxist, but also given to talking about a dubious entity called ‘civilization.’

On the other hand, when Kosambi talked about the Indian civilization, he entered a discourse of civilization that was developed by some of the most creative minds of twentieth century India, including Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, and Jawaharlal Nehru. The questions that engaged such minds were roughly the same as those Kosambi grappled with. What kept India together as a civilization through the millennia? Was it a Hindu civilization, as some would have us believe? Is it possible to discern a continuity in this civilization from the prehistoric to colonial times? How does a notion of an ‘Indian civilization’ accommodate the immense diversities in the constituent communities and cultures? Is it necessary, even if it were possible, to talk of an ‘Indian civilization’? How did Kosambi’s intervention relate with the nationalist discourse of civilization?

It is interesting to recall that about two years after the birth of Kosambi (July 31, 1907), M. K. Gandhi, not yet the Mahatma, published his very first political tract, Hind Swaraj (1909). It was an unusual political tract in that it was mainly about India’s civilization. “It is my deliberate opinion that India is being ground down not under the English heels, but under that of modern civilization” (chapter VII). In a chapter entitled ‘What is civilization’ Gandhi poses a choice between what he considered to be true Indian civilization and the ‘materialistic’ civilization of Europe, for that choice would determine the outcome of the clash between the two. Gandhi virtually subordinates the political agenda before India to the cultural agenda and goes so far as to say our goal was not the expulsion of the English: “We can accommodate them. Only there is no room for their civilization” (chapter XIV).

Gandhi’s denunciation of Europe and idealisation of the non-materialistic tradition in India was, of course, distant from Kosambi’s emphasis on the material basis of India’s attainment of a high level of civilization. On the other hand, consider the fact that throughout the text of Hind Swaraj Gandhi never talks of a Hindu civilization. He talks of an Indian civilization. And the seminal notion of syncretism as the key to comprehending Indian civilization is already there in this very first piece of political statement by Mahatma Gandhi. He speaks of India’s “faculty of assimilation.”

Between this approach and Kosambi’s there are close parallels. Kosambi begins his treatise on The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India with the statement that India displays “diversity and unity at the same time.” And he deploys the notion of syncretism in Indian civilization in explicating the absorption of peripheral tribal groups into the mainstream, “their merger into general agrarian society,” in terms of the accommodation of their religious belief systems within the Brahmanic scheme of things. He saw a “process of syncretism” in the absorption of “primitive deities,” a “mechanism of acculturation, a clear give and take,” which allowed “Indian society to be formed out of many diverse and even discordant elements” (chapter 7).

The idea of a syncretism in the construal of India’s civilizational unity was of crucial importance in the nationalist discourse. The absence of the European concept of nationhood in the pre-colonial past, despite the substantial evidence of the existence of an indigenous notion of patriotism at the regional and sometimes also at the supra-regional level, was undeniable. The intellectual response to this perception was the idea of India’s civilizational unity, cutting across and over-riding all diversities.

Shortly before Gandhi wrote famously of India as a civilization, Rabindranath Tagore articulated the idea of syncretism in some less-known essays. “We can see that the aim of Bharatavarsha has always been to establish unity amidst differences, to bring diverse paths to a convergence, and to internalize within her soul the unity within severalty, that is to say to comprehend the inner unity of externally perceptible differences — without eliminating the uniqueness of each element.” Tagore wrote thus and much more in that vein in 1902 in an essay, ‘History of Bharatvarsha,’ which was reproduced many times during the Swadeshi agitation in Bengal from 1905. More prominent in the public mind were of course the pronouncements of the nationalist leadership.

While Kosambi shared this perception, while he underlined the unity within apparent diversity, he went on to make a point that was not often made in the nationalist discourse of civilization. “The modern Indian village gives an unspeakable impression of the grimmest poverty and helplessness,” he writes in 1965 in the book cited earlier (chapter 1). “The surplus taken away from people who live in such misery and degradation nevertheless provided and still provides the material foundation for Indian culture and civilization.” This evaluation was a radical departure from the oft-heard paeans of praise of the civilization.

Another new note struck by Kosambi was that stability of a civilizational unity was secured at the cost of stagnation and subjection to a regime of superstition and primitiveness. In this regard he follows Marx’s tendency of thought and at one point he even quoted Marx on ‘the idiocy’ of rural existence. Kosambi argues that syncretism allowed the admission of many a “primitive local god or goddess” and religious beliefs into the ancient Brahmanic system, along with the merger of different social groups with their own belief-systems and cultures. But he adds: “Brahmanism thus gave some unity to what would have been social fragments without a common bond. The process was of crucial importance in the history of India, first in developing the country from tribe to society and then holding it back, bogged down in the filthy swamp of superstition.”

His notion of the ‘primitive’ and the implicit idea of progression to ‘higher’ stages may be open to question today. In fact that approach is not so pronounced in his earlier essays on this theme, for example Myth and Reality (1962). However, the point for the present is that, contrary to the usual nationalist position with regard to the virtues of syncretism, he was critical of the consequences in terms of the obscurantism that enveloped the Indian mind.

The most famous exposition of the theme of the unifying Indian civilization in Kosambi’s lifetime was Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India (1946). Nehru commences with the question, “what is this India, apart from her physical and geographical aspects?” (p.36) He goes on to hazard a bold generalisation: in India’s past “disruptive tendencies gave rise immediately to attempts to find a synthesis. Some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization.” He returns to this theme through the entire work time and again. He ends the book with reflections on the same question: India is “a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads…She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive” (p. 378).

The idea that India was held together by bonds of unity rooted in the past of Indian civilization was not of course new. What was new was its assertion at a time when that unity was threatened by a communal divide that was soon to bring about the Partition of 1947. In the face of the threat, Nehru speaks of a dream of Indian unity. In early 20th century that unity appeared as an undeniable reality to Gandhi or Tagore; to Nehru in 1946 it was a dream, although it was in some ways also a reality. To Kosambi that unity possibly appeared as an enduring fact of history.

But when Kosambi reviewed this book, in Science and Society, he did not comment upon this aspect of it. Actually he found Nehru to be a poor historian so far as ancient India was concerned; he added however that he was “an admirer of the author” and he could see how difficult it was for Nehru, sitting in jail, to get the sources he needed. His critique was directed mainly against Nehru’s failure to attempt class analysis in understanding modern developments in India (Exasperating Essays, 1957). In this regard Kosambi was consistent in that he made class analysis the basis of his analysis of changes and continuities in Indian civilization when he turned to that theme in 1965.

That raises finally another question. What explanatory weight is to be assigned to Kosambi’s Marxian method in our effort to understand and contextualise his approach to the civilizational discourse? In a letter to his old friend Daniel Ingalls, an Indologist at Harvard, he wrote in 1953: “The world is divided into three groups: (1) swearing by Marxism, (2) swearing at Marxism, (3) indifferent, i.e. just swearing…I belong to (1), you and your colleagues to (2).” Perhaps Kosambi’s adherence to Marxism was to its use as a method, not as a source on par with empirical sources of knowledge.

He allowed that in some respects there was a poor fit between Indian history and the classical Marxian scheme. But he consistently used Marx’s method as a tool. Hence his scorn for ‘theological’ tendencies in Marxism. In his Introduction to Exasperating Essays he writes: “Indian Official Marxists hereafter called OM” were often displeased with him but he could not but protest their “theological emphasis on the inviolable sanctity of the current party line, or irrelevant quotations from the classics.” In using Marxist method in his own lights, in his effort to construe the civilization in India, in the convergences and divergences between his approach and the nationalist discourse of civilization, D.D. Kosambi has left much for us to try and understand and evaluate.

    (Dr. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya is Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research and a former Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. This article is based on his Kosambi Birth Centenary Address at the University of Mumbai.)

Courtesy: The Hindu

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The king is gone, long live the kingdom’s old ways

July 29, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Siddharth Varadarajan

By abandoning the principle of consensus in favour of arithmetical machinations, Nepal’s discredited establishment is betraying the aspirations of the young republic.

When the people of Nepal cast their votes in the elections to the Constituent Assembly in April, they did so not merely in order to abolish the monarchy. What they wanted was an end to the era of manipulated democracy in which political parties and politicians swung this way or that for no reason other than to grab or hold on to power. That is why they delivered a crushing blow to the two establishment parties most associated with this brand of crass parliamentarianism — the Nepali Congress and the Unified Marxists-Leninists. If the voters sealed the fate of the Shah dynasty by choosing candidates who were formally committed to the republic, they also sent a stern message to that lesser Nepali dynasty, the Koiralas, by defeating the daughter and virtually every close relative of its patriarch, Girija Prasad, barring one. As for the UML, there was no better measure of the public’s contempt for its opportunism of the past few years than the defeat handed out to its leader, Madhav Kumar Nepal, from both the constituencies he contested.

By voting in the Maoists as the single largest party, the electorate also sent a clear message that it favoured the new. But voters tempered this message by denying the former rebels an absolute majority of their own. Under the rules of Nepal’s interim constitution as it stood at the time of the election, a two-thirds majority was needed for any major decision, including the election of Prime Minister and President. By giving the Maoists a little more than one-third of the seats in the 601-strong house, the electorate said it wanted the Maoists to keep alive the principle of consensus that had served Nepal’s parties so well in the struggle against the monarchy. And also that it considered the party’s manifesto to be so important to the constitutional development of Nepal that its views could not be ignored by the CA, even if the Old Establishment were to gang up against them.

Sadly for democracy, peace and the immediate future of the young republic, however, this fine balance that the electorate struck has now been cynically subverted by reactionary elements in the NC and the UML.

By stitching together an unprincipled coalition together with the UML and the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum of Upendra Yadav, the NC managed to get one of its leaders, Ram Baran Yadav, a Madhesi politician, elected President. As part of the same bargain, the MJF’s Parmanand Jha was elected Vice-President. In both cases, the Maoist-backed nominees for President and VP — the independent Madhesi activist and intellectual, Rama Raja Prasad Singh, and the independent legislator, Shanta Shrestha, respectively — were defeated.

Sequence of betrayal

Once it was clear that the Maoists had emerged as the largest party in April, the NC and the UML more or less conceded that the party would have the right to lead the new government. At the same time, they kept raising procedural and policy obstacles in the way of the Maoist leader, Prachanda, becoming Prime Minister. In particular, they said the Maoists might never leave power if the two-thirds majority rule were not replaced by a simple majority. Mr. Prachanda warned that such a change would destroy the principle of consensus and bring in the power-play of majority and minority, but his concerns were brushed aside.

Even after amending the interim constitution to allow the President and Prime Minister to be chosen (and removed) by a simple majority, the political stalemate persisted. For the better part of the past two months, the question of who would become the republic’s first President paralysed the entire process of government formation. After initially staking a foolish claim for both the prime ministership and the presidency, the Maoists had quickly backed off from the latter and expressed their willingness to nominate any prominent non-political personality for the job of ceremonial head of state. But this proposal was immediately rejected by the NC, which proposed, instead, that the caretaker Prime Minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, be elevated to President and none else. Given Mr. Koirala’s age and indifferent health, as well as the well-founded fear that he would use the job to create an alternative power centre, the Maoists baulked at his nomination.

With deadlock at that end, the Maoists asked the UML to nominate someone other than Mr. Nepal — whom they judged to be unsuitable given that he lost both the seats he contested in the April elections — for the presidency. This time, it was the UML’s turn to be adamant. The party rejected the Maoist suggestion that its senior leader, Shahana Pradhan, or any woman, Dalit or janajati from its ranks be made President, and insisted instead that it wanted only Mr. Nepal for the job.

Rebuffed by the intransigence of both parties, the Maoists then turned to the fourth-largest formation in the CA, the MJF, with an offer they thought no self-respecting Madhesi group could refuse: the nomination of Rama Raja Prasad Singh as President. The MJF was unhappy with the choice of Mr. Singh but could not afford to openly reject him. So it insisted that one of its members be made Vice-President, something the Maoists were unwilling to accept since they had imagined the top four posts of President, VP, Prime Minister and Speaker would be equitably divided among different sections of the population in such a way that Madhesis, women, Pahadis and janajatis would all feel they had a stake in the new set-up.

As the Maoist agreement with the MJF broke down, the NC and the UML rushed to field their own Madhesi nominees for President. For two months, these parties had refused to come up with any names other than those of their top leaders. But now that it seemed the political stalemate could be broken in such a way as to isolate the Maoists, the two Establishment parties promptly withdrew their insistence on nominating Mr. Koirala or Mr. Nepal. With the MJF on board, a carve-up was effected wherein an NC leader with no credibility in the struggle of Madhesis became President (the UML helpfully withdrew its nominee, Ramprit Paswan), an MJF leader became the Vice-President and the UML’s Subhash Nemwang was chosen to be Speaker of the CA.

At the best of times, such unprincipled politics should have no place in a democracy. What makes the recent drama more sordid is that it is taking place in a country that has just freed itself from the yoke of monarchy and is trying to usher in a constitutional system that would genuinely empower its citizens.

Having demonstrated the viability of their unholy coalition, the NC and the UML are now saying they have no objection to the Maoists forming the government. It is clear, however, that any Maoist-led government would be subject to constant blackmail by the Old Establishment. That is why Mr. Prachanda has said he is still willing to enter and lead the new government but only on the basis of an understanding with all the parties in the CA about the broad policies to be followed and about the new set-up not being destabilised.

The present stalemate presents both an opportunity and a dilemma for the Maoists. By staying out of power and insisting that the Old Establishment run the country as it sees fit, the party will almost certainly ensure an even bigger vote share for itself when elections are next held. But staying out of power will vitiate the constitution writing process and perhaps even fatally imperil it. It will also raise questions about the smooth implementation of the peace process, since any NC-UML led government is unlikely to pursue the promised integration of the Peoples’ Liberation Army with the Nepal Army.

The presence of the MJF in the coalition alongside the NC and the UML will also open up a dangerous frontline. The latter two parties are reluctant federalists who embraced the concept of an inclusive Nepal only because the Maoists placed it squarely on the national agenda. Will they end up appeasing the more extremist elements of the MJF and provoke a backlash of the kind that has already started, thanks to Mr. Parmanand Jha taking his oath of office in Hindi rather than in his constitutionally-recognised mother tongue of Maithili? Or will the Pahadi chauvinists amongst their ranks prevail and push for a polarisation of the polity on ethnic lines?

Though the Maoists have every right to feel betrayed and cheated, they must make one last attempt to foster a consensus. For better or worse, the former rebels are the only party with the ability to manage the contradictions and faultlines which lie at the base of Nepali society. A government that is not led by them will find it hard to negotiate its way through the next 20 months during which the rising and sometimes contradictory aspirations of Nepal’s people must be bound together in the emerging Constitution.

Even at the eleventh hour, it is essential that democratic elements in the NC and the UML put an end to the dangerous course their parties have embarked upon. President Yadav should immediately invite Mr. Prachanda to form a government, swear him in and give him one month to demonstrate he has the support of the CA. Nepal has a unique opportunity to showcase its spirit of republicanism and peace at the SAARC summit in Sri Lanka next week. There can be no better way of doing so than for Kathmandu to be represented by Prime Minister Prachanda.

Courtesy: The Hindu

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