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Journalism of Courage
It is not surprising that the CPM has attributed the recent communal skirmishes in the country, especially the one in Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh to the “gameplan of the BJP-RSS combine”. In a front page article called ‘Diabolic RSS plan unfolds’ in People’s Democracy, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat writes that “all sorts of provocations are engineered for violence to be resorted to against the Muslim minorities”. According to him, one of the reasons for the violence — in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, apart from UP — is the Golwalkar birth centenary functions and Hindu Sammelans.
He also blames the ‘secular forces’ for not standing up to this “danger”. In UP, he writes, “The Samajwadi Party, the Congress and the BSP are engaged in mutual recriminations, with none of them targeting the BJP which is the main culprit.” The test of secular forces, he believes, are those who stand up to the “communal gangsterism unleashed by Adityanath and his cohorts”. He says the time has come for the JD(U), the JD(S) and the BJD to dissociate from the BJP-RSS.
1857 once more
In another article in People’s Democracy there is praise for Sangh Parivar icon, Veer Savarkar, for his analysis of the Revolt of 1857. In the second piece in the series on the revolt which the CPM weekly has been carrying, Biswamoy Pati writes that by the end of the 19th century the 1857 revolt had attracted and inspired the first generation of Indian nationalists. “V.D. Savarkar, who was perhaps the first Indian to write about the revolt in 1909, called it ‘The Indian War of Independence of 1857’. His pro-nationalist stance made Savarkar reject the colonial assertion that linked the Revolt with the greased cartridges,” writes Pati in his article ‘The Revolt and its historiography: An overview’. He says the link to the greased cartridges was disproved by Savarkar by pointing to the fact that it could attract such a wide group as Nana Sahib, the emperor of Delhi, Rani of Jhansi and Khan Bahadur Khan, and that the revolt continued even after orders were issued to withdraw the offending cartridges.
There is one criticism, though. “The importance he (Savarkar) gave to religion illustrates the influence of the imperial writers on him”. As for the Congress, Pati says after its formation in 1885, it had “denounced” the revolt given the background of its leaders “who were pro-British in their thinking”. On the Marxist interpretation of the revolt, by M.N. Roy and Rajni Palme Dutt, Pati analyses Roy as being dismissive as he saw in it “a struggle between the worn out feudal system and the newly produced commercial capitalism”. Dutt saw the revolt as a major peasant revolt “fighting to turn back the tide of foreign domination”.
Case for industry
West Bengal CPM state secretary Biman Bose, writing against the backdrop of the recent upheaval in the state on securing land for industry, prepares the argument for land acquisition by saying that a “new and fresh opportunity for industrialisation in Bengal has been created of late” boosted by its geographical location, the “flourishing ports” of Kolkata and Haldia, and the prime minister’s Look East policy.
He suggests a united approach against the Right and the ‘sectarian Left’. Asserting that employment opportunities will not grow without industrialisation because with land getting fragmented, and with families growing, income from agriculture would not be enough to support family members of those who had benefited from the redistribution of land. People are sensitive about their land and “we must interact with the small and marginal farmers per se with a great degree of patience. This form of campaign alone will bear fruit and be effective,” says Basu while pointing to the success of Haldia Petrochemicals, Bakreswar Thermal Power project and the Salt Lake electronics project.
-Compiled by Ananda Majumdar
