Wednesday, February 7, 2018

India's Public Intellectuals

 Dhruv Jaishankar in Scroll.in

Amid the hectic Indian conference season – the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in December, the Raisina Dialogue in January, and now the Jaipur Literature Festival – it is worth asking ourselves a simple question. Are we witnessing the dawn or the demise of the public intellectual?

 At one level, everyone with access to a smartphone and an active social media presence is a public intellectual today, or certainly acts like one. It has become easy to share one’s views with a large number of people on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp or any other social media platform.

 Paradoxically, we also seem to be witnessing the global decline of public intellectualism, as politics becomes more rancorous, the media becomes more clickbait-driven, and academia retreats further into the ivory tower. Moreover, subject matter expertise has become more specialised and siloed, so that we are today less likely to have the archetypal man (or woman) of letters – a Bertrand Russell, John Maynard Keynes, Virginia Woolf, or Michel Foucault.

 On Republic Day, I posed a question to friends on Facebook: Who are the five most important public intellectuals in India today? The inspiration was an article by Tufts University professor Daniel Drezner on his Washington Post blog, which was itself inspired by a tweet. Some of the responses I received were predictable. Former public servant and writer Gopalkrishna Gandhi and the historian Romila Thapar featured prominently. Economists such as Amartya Sen, Kaushik Basu, and Bibek Debroy, who are also fluid writers on a variety of subjects, made appearances. So did conservative writers and political figures like Arun Shourie and Swapan Dasgupta. There were some curious suggestions, including the widely-ridiculed if even more widely-read popular writer Chetan Bhagat.

 Some absences were surprising. No one, for example, mentioned social theorist Ashis Nandy, who would perhaps have been foremost on people’s minds a couple of decades ago. I would also have expected influential figures such as economist Jean Drèze, environmentalist Sunita Narain, sociologist André Béteille, or Yogendra Yadav, Madhu Kishwar, or Mukul Kesavan to have made the cut for some people.

 An assessment of an intellectual’s importance should not be conflated with concurrence or correspondence with one’s personal beliefs. Nor should it simply be correlated to influence or public profile. In this context, I would primarily equate importance with irreplaceability. Whose voices would be felt most by their absence? Obviously, there will be considerable disagreement even on this criterion, but these would be my humble suggestions:
  1. Ramachandra Guha: Guha has written eloquently on history, politics, environmentalism, and cricket. No other writer is read as much by aspirants to the Indian civil services examination. Despite its many shortcomings, India After Gandhi still remains the go-to introduction to contemporary India. Until someone else can produce as broad and accessible a body of work, Guha would have to feature on any such list.
  2. Pratap Bhanu Mehta: An institution-builder both at the Centre for Policy Research and now at Ashoka University, Mehta has become a household name from his regular newspaper columns. There is no aspect of public policy that has not been covered in his pieces in The Indian Express, and he has driven important work on public institutions. One may disagree with him on many accounts (and many on both the Right and Left certainly do), but few people today drive and shape the discourse on public affairs as much as he does.
  3. Shashi Tharoor: If anyone puts the public in public intellectual in India, it is perhaps Tharoor, who writes faster than most of us read. Despite a political perch in the Lok Sabha, he finds time to pen a critique of the British Empire and a commentary on Hinduism, all while remaining a ubiquitous presence in the media, on the conference circuit, and at literary festivals. He is also an active presence on social media and commands some respect across the political aisle. His voice – and vocabulary – remain unique in India’s public sphere.
  4. Ashok Malik: My inclusion in this list of Malik – who was appointed press secretary to the president of India in August – might appear the most surprising, but his is the most demonstrable case of importance by (temporary) absence. A journalist and columnist, Malik has written thoughtfully and critically on everything from the business of airlines and television, foreign policy and trade, and regionalism and high politics. Guha, Mehta and Tharoor often defy precise ideological pigeon-holing, but none could be said to be consistently conservative or Right-of-centre. The paucity of prominent Right-wing intellectuals despite having a notionally Right-wing government in power for the past four years in my mind necessitates Malik’s inclusion in such a list. He provides a lucid window into elements of politics, economics, and policy that most Indian intellectuals have long overlooked – and, unfortunately, continue to overlook.
  5. Raghuram Rajan: At least one of the five should be an economist, and India has in fact produced its fair share of eminent economists (Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya, and Arvind Subramanian come to mind, in addition to Sen and Basu). A few years ago, Sen would have been the obvious candidate, as India’s only Nobel laureate in economics and writer of The Argumentative Indian, among other less scholarly and more popular works. However, Sen’s legacy has been tarnished somewhat of late, and based on his star power and outspokenness on a variety of issues, Rajan should probably take precedence in such a list today.

 

Lack of diversity

 A significant problem many might have with my list is that all five are elite-educated (Doon School, Oxford, St Stephens, La Martinière, and the Indian Institute of Technology) middle-aged males. Three of the five are based in New Delhi, none belong to religious minorities, and all write primarily in English. At least three of the five are ardent cricket fans. This lack of diversity is a fair criticism.

 While such potential criticism does not alter my submissions, it is only fair to highlight some of the emerging voices contributing in various ways to India’s intellectual discourse. Such a list can never do complete justice to every sector and viewpoint, but people like the prolific political theorist Madhav Khosla, the founder of the Takshashila Institution Nitin Pai, or the former banker and non-fiction writer Sanjeev Sanyal (currently principal economic advisor to the Finance Ministry) come immediately to mind.

 There are also a very large number of women now shaping intellectual trends and undercurrents, among them writer and Financial Times columnist Nilanjana Roy, economist Gita Gopinath (currently an advisor to the chief minister of Kerala), president of the Centre for Policy Research Yamini Aiyar, lawyer Menaka Guruswamy, journalist and author Snigdha Poonam, and the economist (and my Brookings India colleague) Shamika Ravi.

 We also have the phenomenon of non-Indians who comment intelligently and perceptively on several aspects of Indian public life, such as British biographer and historian Patrick French, Nepal-born political journalist Prashant Jha, and Washington-based Indian-American political analyst Milan Vaishnav. I am sure many others would come to mind upon further reflection.

 Some of these names might make it to a list of most important public intellectuals in India in some years’ time. But even a superficial list of such emerging talent shows that while younger voices and women might soon feature more prominently in Indian public discourse, minorities, multilingual writers, and serious Right-of-centre thinkers remain under-represented. This remains something to remedy.

Dhruva Jaishankar is Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at Brookings India.

No Islamophobia There

(A Facebook friend posted a status with which this post begins. The comments too are appended. In fact at the moment the full post is not pasted below but the missing part is small.. I shall comment on the episode later on.)


Muslims really need to come out of their Islamophobiaphobia! Most otherwise seemingly secular folks will suddenly pull out their scimitars at the mention of criminality among ayatollahs. Suddenly all of Islam is under threat of destruction. The brain shuts down. No one will read links to information. Clues that show respectability of information sources, like back links, will be rejected. In effect, every evidence that shows anything negative about Islam, will be rejected out... See More

171 Parijat Misra, Jahanzeb Mashhadi and 169 others

Zohra Javed : We are all enclosed in our squares ... Kisi ke liye Modi kisi ke liye Khomeini kisi aur ke liye Zakir Naik ... And many many more ... So then stay enclosed ... And quiet too ... Don't shout against Modi and co if you cannot hear against The Khomeinis and The Saddams of the world !!!
Rulers are Rulers and they are all the same ... If a religious leader can influence political atmosphere in a country he is no religious leader

Pearly Gill : Zohra Javed....you shine like star on this thread💕

Zohra Javed : Bahot shukriya Pearly Gill ji and Shamim Kunju ji

I am grateful to my mentors ... Virtual though ... Dr Asghar Ali Engineer , Dev Saheb , Dr Badri Raina , Sahir Ludhianvi , The Dalai Lama ... Their writings have showed me the way forward

Makhan Singh : have u ever read the Quran, cover to cover? ya bas awein?

Rajiv Tyagi : Cover bhi koi padhne ki cheez hai kya? Phir bhi padhi. :)

Makhan Singh : sirf cover hi padh k chhor diya. it reflects in ur posts. 😊

Rajiv Tyagi : Cover ke baad baaki jahalat bhi ho sakta hai na? :)

Makhan Singh : wo to padhne k baad hi pata chalega. how can u decide without even reading?

i thot u r a rational person, but u hav disappointed me.

Rajiv Tyagi : No rational person engaged with religion... :)

Mohamed Ameenullah : Knowing or learning is not engaging.
deliberately wants to wipe out religions having no clue of what actually it is,this is no lesser than prejudiced religious people.
Disappointing to see the people whom i've believed to be secular turning into sanghis.

Makhan Singh : rational persons do not believe on hearsay. they put in some effort to find out the truth themselves.

wid each reply u r proving to be an ignorant sheep, simply following the herd, not a rational person. sorry to say tht.

Makhan Singh : u can read Quran to point out its mistakes n errors but u wont do it. coz u r afraid tht ur preconceived ideas abt Islam n Quran might get shattered.

Arshad Abdul Qaiyoom : Rajiv Tyagi. As told by many out here, please do read the Quran! Whatever Makhan Singh has said is absolutely right! Even I feel the same about you. You are defining "religion" by your own notions that you are witnessing by just seeing/observing your surroundings. While that may be the case with many religions that certainly is not the case with Islam. Whatever your post against Islam I can outrightly see the points that you are missing and the ignorance that you are having thats leading you into misunderstanding. I can see this because I'm a student of the religion. I don't like to follow anything blindly! Only when you read the Quran and Prophet Muhammad's biography you'll know what I'm talking abt is the truth. Better late than never bhaii! May God guide you. You are certainly not at a loss by trying out something. But in case what you didn't try out turns out to the truth, then no one can help you. So, its more logical to try out something than leaving it untouched.

Preet K S Bedi : Et tu, Brutus? What compelled u to see logic?

Rajiv Tyagi : I don't need to strive and strain to do that, Preet... :)

Yusuf Siddiqui : And you got the opportunity;Et tu ,Mr bedi?

Preet K S Bedi : Der aaye durust aaye. Islamophobia is an interesting catch-all condition. Let's see how long the infection lasts.

Preet K S Bedi : I don't need to make an effort. The world's fastest growing community (sic!) revels in victimhood 24x7. Gives me enough and more opportunities to tear into its humbug.

Umer Khan : U reminds me the late Indira Gandhi ji .Preet K S Bedi

Preet K S Bedi : That is bad news for me. Luckily I care a rats unwashed posterior about your certification so it's OK.

Tarique Khan : As if others care about your 'esteemed' rant.

Yusuf Siddiqui : Preet K S Bedi If i may,your criticism to only one form of extremist looks fake when one wears religious extremism on his head to cheek to toe. Try Gillette 3 shaver,it works wonder,try different hairstyle,it's normal. Wish,you ain't in a rat race to wipe out other extremism to protect yours..get over wounded psyche of dhimmitude...it ain't real.

Yusuf Siddiqui : Sudarshan Udyavar I pity your miniscule intellect,ofcourse,wearing religious symbols including scull cap,tilak,choti,turban etc are meant to flaunt your faith and not fashion. Unless,it doesn't harm me or question others,it's fair but to question other one has to remove his. Simple.

Preet K S Bedi : Hahaha jaane do. When irrespective of gender u r castrated at a young age u can only think of Gillette blades! Btw Mohammed whose preaching Muslims garbaged literally the day he died, wore a headdress much like the turban. So did Abu Bakr Umar Othman and Ali. But it's OK they were Muslims. Unlike today's castrated cattle which carries Islamic names but garbages it's own.

Yusuf Siddiqui : A bit correction,not castrated but circumcised and that's custom not religion. I understand People who dwelled in Sand ,weared turban to protect themselves from Sun heat but i fail to see your reason/s ,sitting in AC rooms,driving in cool cars?

Preet K S Bedi : No no castrated. That's why the world's fastest growing community lacks the balls to even talk reform. And the three people who do all have fatwas against their name while thousands are raped and killed in the name of Allah and castrates remain silent. Castrated community. Both C's in caps.

Yusuf Siddiqui : Preet K S Bedi If my advice matters,i have suggestion,try Circumcision,you still have life..bet you won't repent.
I am all open for reforms but your start is quite poor..too rhetoric and i see your turban justification purely whataboutery. Any rational,i would hear,else we often hit each other.

Preet K S Bedi : Yes but the mullahs cut your balls. Pity u never even figured!

Yusuf Siddiqui : Ha Ha! I wonder ,why your intellectual arguments end with BALLS? It's cold storage for semens without which one can't breed . Hope,we aren't in a fight 'my balls are stronger than yours' you sounding funny!
1
Preet K S Bedi : Knowing the biology does not mean u have the balls.

Preet K S Bedi : As for breeding which is possibility only achievement the community has, if I were u I would check with the women.

Yusuf Siddiqui : My ball-logy instinct suggests,it's time to bid adieu,you have no further rational arguments left.
Wish to see you clean shaven and parted hair or jelled one..when we hit next time. 😊

Preet K S Bedi : May be the burqa and other instruments of misogyny including FGM r not as effective as u think

Yusuf Siddiqui : We can touch other subjects ,may be on some other day. You being too impatient,need solution in a single pckage...Ciao ! Ciao!

Preet K S Bedi : Really? The mass murderer Khomeini returned in 1979. 9×11 happened in 2001. Thousands have been kidnapped raped and killed since then both in internecine wars between shias and Sunnis since then. And continue to be killed. What had begun with Muslim Brotherhood has spawned into mujahidin, hizbul, al qaeda, boko, al shabaab, LeT, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah and dozens of others, each of which have killed and continue to kill by the day. And the world is expected to wait while the ghantadhari moderate Muslim acquires some balls and demand reform? Lolol. That it doesn't embarrass u is a miracle by itself. But so is the community of castrates.

Preeti Khaneja Kalra : Preet K S Bedi sharp & on fleek!

Danish Haroon : Rajiv tyagi, please teach your own community first that there is shambhu lal, karni sena, rss, bajrang dal,hindu yuva vahini, shiv sena, what the hell is this. You really don't know about islam, you just a google fact man run by zoinist ass holes. Nxt tym read quran in our mother tongue "hindi". Of you don't have inbox me, i will send you.

Omer Ghazi : Kaise kaise chutiya log hain...

Danish Haroon : Omer Ghazi, please indinetify chutiya is it me or admin. Lol

Faisal Saeed :  He is just another sanghi in garb of atheist

Sumeet Dutt Rishi : Funny! How quickly he became a sanghi and yet I never see a squeak when he tirades against sanghi’s!! I guess this liberal islamophobia is a real thing.

Adam A Khan :  He’s a sanghi atheist lol 😂

Faisal Saeed :  Funny how hidden sanghis when exposed react....

Iqbal Ahmad : the Qur'an talks about compassion, kindness and mercy, but most of the Muslims just talk about jihad, there's nothing better and advisable than mercy and compassion, but thanks to the mulla when we talk about Muslim there is always jihad somewhere in our mind

Satyajit Dash : Proud of you

Mohinder Bir Pal Singh : Such people are better known as manipulators! They are omnipresent in all religions! It's the blind faith in sermons that drive the followers haywire! Very well described Iqbal Ahmad sir!

Iqbal Ahmad : i assure you it's the mostly uneducated between who the hardline clergy have some influence, because the poor and uneducated can not research and find out what should be ideally followed, it's the same in neighboring nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh, where the middle and upper middle are largely secular and open minded, progressive

Arun P Mathew : Yes. A mdieval belief system will have aspects which are incompatible to modern life. If anyone says they cannot be criticised, that may not be agreeable to the rest. And yes,i have read the Quran and Hadiths to know this!

Yusuf Siddiqui : Ha Ha! Seen you being stung by Iran fans,same bunch of crusaders who often claim Iran as a peaceful and Sacred Nation It was quite humourous to see them defending Khomeni's extremism who killed lakhs of gullible followers.

Abhishek Singh:  Muslim bros, many of need to adopt a rational and secular outlook. u need to understand there is nothing absolute and everything keeps on changing with time except for truth, justice etc

Zohra Javed : Love the concluding sentence ... So true really ... :-D

Nadir Aslam : Rajiv Tyagi I remember reading this a few or many years back.But don't really know whose thinking it was or whose order it was.Whether it actually happened or it was only a rumor.My God is not going to send someone to heaven only because she was a virgin :) A virgin can go to hell for wrongs committed while even a non virgin can go to heaven if she was good.

Ashok Soni : Every Religion is a Political Party!

Sandeep Das : I'm much younger to you, Tyagi Sir, currently
we should not deviate from the Dushman.. Your point is right.. but I think we could debate it later..

Shariq MB : Right, Sandeep. And the Dushman is Communalism, prejudice, and hatred, which groups and certain individuals practice. Sadly, even well-meaning folks can fall into that trap and fan prejudice inadvertently because they failed to be judicious and believe everything as the Gospel of Truth. ;) 😂

Nishith Gupta : Dushman....hahaha...what a idiotic comment

Mobin Khaja : Agree

Shafi Patel : A belief system is different from many of its adherents,marketeers and exploiters. Atheism and agnosticism are no different in this respect.

Rajiv Joshi : If one is not sure about truth in their faith, then they are angry.If the faith petmits one to reason and discard what can not be justified and evolve then one is not scared of opposite views.

Manvendra Bhangui:  Just mugging your favourite 'Fairy Tale' by heart doesn't make one a scholar. None of these Ayatollahs were scholars and especially someone who orders assassination of a real scholar like Salman Rushdie.

Ashok R. Mundhada : Or actually murders Gauri Lankesh for that matter.

Kalyani Iyengar : You are no chicken definitely, forget a hen😜😜

Tushqa Manish Chawdhry : Bicharay religious people.. They are nothing but bahut buri tarah daray hue log. Arre bhai yeh he narak hae, marnay kae baad he narak sae chutkara milay ga 🤣

Shahid Anwar : Scratch a non believer and he will show his communal fangs.

Abhishek Tyagi : So long as people see you as a 'born' Hindu commenting on the Right wing Sanghis and Hinduism in general, you are a balanced secular, liberal person. The moment you comment on any other religion, people demand that you read their scriptures better to p...See More

Sankara Pillai : What a bhaktha you are!

Md Zishan Ahmed Kaif : Don't know why people are ashamed... Of things they do... The Quran talks about compassion, mercy kindness, humanity, but at the same time it ask to take action against unlawful activities... No need to come with interpretation that suits ur kind

Sachin Parashar : Dissolve all Religions and keep the Constitution OR keep One Religion and dissolve the Constitution. They can never go parallel.

Makhan Singh : Rajiv Tyagi ji it's time for u to take a sabbatical from FB. u seem to b fatigued. tht's why making absurd arguments.
To critique an omlette one definitely doesnt need to become a hen but only needs to eat the omlette. else, he/she doesn't hav any right to critique it.

Ashik Parvez Ahmed : Don’t judge a book by its cover. An intelligent person should read the Quran without any bias or prejudice.

Rafiq Lasne : Rajiv Tyagi sir... superbly said. (Y)

Khushnood Nizami : Is it a crime to be religious

Syed Aasim : देखना है, बहुत लंबा पोस्ट है

Mohd Arslan : I wonder why you have big constitutional book?? Instruction manuals?? And i am sure most of you don’t even read terms and conditions of most things and yet they are there. GET A LIFE!! And update your android!!😂😂

Preeti Khaneja Kalra : Kudos to you for saying that Rajiv tyagi! hope u understand how needful it is for our society that liberals like u with such an expansive following, come forth & raise such points!,,Not surprised by the resistance of your Muslim friends who are taking it in a sour note though!

Pearly Gill:  .......so funny ....every time you put up a post on Islam....all your wonderful,cheery followers/friends go for your jugular.
The double standards of these people is mind blowing.

Versailles Thomas : True! call out the assholes who are fucking it up instead of just isolating yourself from it and saying that's not us..The perpetrator is doing it with his clarity of the faith that he's following...

Faisal Saeed : He is just another sanghi in garb of an atheist

Sachin S : And CIA and zionists are behind this , right ? 😂😂

T Jayaraman on CPI(M) Keeping a Distance from Congress

  
  The roots of the rise of Hindutva lie in substantial measure in the nature of Congress rule and in particular the UPA governments of 2004 to 2014.
Many commentators, in the mainstream and on social media, have been urging the Left to align with the Congress in preparation for the parliamentary elections due next year. Several of them, who have been harping on the theme for some months now, turned harshly critical when the Communist Party of India (Marxist) recently announced that it was against electoral tie-ups in any form with the Congress.

 A substantial part of such commentary emerges from sections who believe that the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019 is of such overriding importance that all other political considerations should be put aside. Alongside this view, such commentators also present increasingly extreme characterisations of the BJP, with any attempt to inject some sobriety or realism into such assessments being met with the charge of downplaying the danger that Hindutva represents..
Any strategy to deal with Hindutva must obviously begin from the acknowledgement of the basic point that the CPI(M) has always made – that the roots of its rise to the current state lie in substantial measure in the nature of Congress rule and in particular the UPA governments of 2004 to 2014. It was the determined pursuit of neoliberal policies by the Congress (and state governments of the non-Left variety) that had alienated the people, with little improvement in their general well-being on a mass scale – a failure that Hindutva seized, promising development.

 Further, given the hold that Hindutva has obtained on Indian society as a whole, across various spheres of national life, mere electoral defeat is hardly the key to halting its advance. Without mass mobilisation on issues that affect the people and without winning a substantial section of the people away from Hindutva ideology, through mass movements for secular and democratic advance, banking on electoral arithmetic alone is likely to be of little use and indeed diversionary. Such mobilisation cannot have unity with the Congress party as its basis, when the alienation of the people at large from it has formed part of the very basis of the rise of Hindutva.

 Events of the last two years lend substantial weight to this understanding – one has only to recall the collapse of the Nitish Kumar-led mahagatbandhan experiment that was much touted at the time of its victory (and the Left excoriated for its non-participation in this alliance) and the failure of the Akhilesh Yadav-Rahul Gandhi led combine in the Uttar Pradesh elections, returning the BJP to power in a virulent avatar in a state where it had not succeeded for almost 15 years. In retrospect, it is clear that even the defeat that Hindutva forces suffered in the 2004 elections was merely a temporary setback, from which they emerged to victory, considerably strengthened, in 2014, led by none other than Narendra Modi, the figure who represented the nadir of the earlier spell of Hindutva rule.,


  On the other hand, from the large-scale mobilisations of farmers in the agitations of Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and the workers’ rally in Delhi, to the prompt condemnation by incensed scientists against the obscurantist remarks of the minister of state for education on teaching evolution, from the mobilisation at Una to the protests at Bhima Koregaon and their aftermath, and the long-drawn student agitations in a number of leading universities – all of these speak to the scope for mobilisation against Hindutva. To convert the energies and advances of such movements into lasting political capital is undoubtedly the challenge.
But why does the enthusiasm for Left-Congress unity override this logic even among some on the Left and in sections otherwise well-disposed to the CPI(M)? Ever since independence, it has been a persistent illusion among a section of progressive opinion that the Congress is in fact a viable vehicle for the project of secular and democratic nation-building. Since the Congress has been the dominant political formation for the better part of post-independence India, even after the communal danger became significant, it is tempting to attribute all forward movement in any sphere of national life to the leadership of the Congress.
Unfortunately what this one-sided view misses is the responsibility of the Congress for all that has not been achieved, and that the Congress had presided over the pursuit of a path of development that had fundamental contradictions, leading to the all-round crisis that began enveloping the Indian state at the beginning of the 1990s.
 
 
 Even after the sharp, rightward shift in economic policy, the illusion has persisted that if not the Congress, other parliamentary coalitions could be the vehicle for a radical movement forward, with the Congress, even if reluctantly, being somehow forced to join. This has been further sustained by the fact that the two responses of the Indian state to the crises of the 1990s, economic reform on the one hand and the push to abandon the secular ideal on the other, have been led by two different parties, the Congress and the BJP respectively.
In reality, this has not stopped the latter from embracing economic reform when in power (however critical they may have been in opposition) and the former from discreetly avoiding head-on engagement with the anti-secular agenda. Both of course have come together in lining up to become a camp follower of the US in foreign policy.

  Unfortunately though, if in an earlier era a section of progressive opinion was seduced by the slogan of Congress socialism, it is now seduced by the slogan of Congress secularism, ignoring the reality that it is the whole gamut of Congress policies that have paved the way for the rise of Hindutva. The dithering and inaction of the P.V. Narasimha Rao government on the eve of the Babri Masjid demolition and the UPA’s refusal in 2004 to heed Harkishen Singh Surjeet’s (then CPI(M) general secretary) call to “detoxify” the government of RSS influence are two outstanding examples of the compromising stance of the Congress on secularism.

 The record of the CPI(M) shows that it chose, since its formation, a completely different course. In an earlier era, in the 1960s and 70s, it stood out in its refusal to tail the Congress, holding it responsible, as the key representative of India’s ruling elite, for the condition of the masses. It led a rising wave of resistance and opposition to Congress rule across the country wherever its strength allowed, leveraging in some areas the effect of other currents of opposition, even while being critical of their shortcomings.

Within ten years, with the Emergency, the correctness of its assessment was amply demonstrated. The party emerging in the post-Emergency era with substantial gains in its strength and mass following, in striking contrast to the diminution of the strength of the Communist Party of India. In the subsequent years, one of the testing periods was that of the V.P. Singh-led National Front government, to which the CPI(M) provided outside support, with the BJP providing another supportive crutch to him.


Critics of the party’s current position would do well to go back to its public, and frankly self-critical, analysis of its political tactics over the last 25 years adopted at its Visakhapatnam congress. This analysis highlighted the fact that the pursuit of electoral alliances, however fruitful in the short term, had led to distraction from the key issue of building the independent strength of the Left and democratic movement, without whose significant presence no stable political shift away from Hindutva could be consolidated.

  The CPI(M)’s latest decision has followed this understanding, even if, as is well known, there have been strains earlier in implementing this line in the Bengal assembly elections. Critics would do well to give credit to the fact that the CPI(M)’s view arises from a well-argued and well-debated understanding, with an objective view of ground realities and not falling for illusions of grandeur. It certainly is not the product of mere inner-party factionalism or the product of seeking some opportunistic, short-term gains as innuendos in the media have made out.

 There can be no short-cut to fighting Hindutva. We are in for the long-haul and it will be a grim fight indeed. But panic-stricken and hasty assessments and the search for quickfire solutions through hasty electoral alliances have not worked for the last 25 years. They are unlikely to do so in the future too.


T. Jayaraman teaches and undertakes research in climate change, sustainable development and science policy at TISS.. The views expressed here are personal.

Source : The Wire