Author: Ajanta Chakraborty
Publication: The Statesman
Date: October 17, 2001
George Bush now knows what fundamentalism
is all about. Atal Behari Vajpayee has long known. But no one knows better
than Kolkatans. We've lived with a kind of extremism for the last quarter
of a century. A fact that was reiterated last Sunday.
Wading through water and human chains
put up by our Red party in protest against a war only powerful satellite
cameras are privvy to, one remembered what VS Naipaul had said of this
city years ago: "The Marxist ideology in Calcutta is a form of fundamentalism.
It is not to be questioned, the answers are all given. What is a wonder
in Calcutta is that it has the most fabulous inversion of Marxist theory
- revolution has become its own intoxication and Marxism has become the
opiate. Its only appearance of life is that it is part of India. Remove
it from the Indian union and it will simply be Bangladesh."
The Nobel laureate didn't live here
long, but long enough to pen down precisely what was wrong with Kolkata
which was then Calcutta. No - it's never been fashionable to question the
CPI-Ms ways. Not when the party has almost every other intellectual on
its side. But over the last 26-odd years, questions have been raised from
time to time by creatures like us whom the Marxists have dismissed as "petite
bourgeois" (read journalists). And so, hapless Kolkatan that I am - I was
commuting last Sunday - I do beg to ask the "neo" Left Front a few questions.
Or would it be more appropriate to ask them of the chief minister, who
is forever swearing by the word "change"?
Dear Mr Bhattacharya, didn't you
the other day seek a concensus from all political parties about banning
rallies or agitations that would disrupt normal life in Kolkata? Weren't
you the one who returned from Japan a fortnight ago and said smugly: The
Japanese are keen to invest here, and I have told them to ask Mitshubishi
how much we have changed, and how congenial is the ambience out here to
investment"?
The same questions were asked by
commuters on public vehicles last Sunday. One only wished a diktaphone
was available to record what they thought of Marxist hypocrisy. For what
it's worth, here's what I remember overhearing:
"Son of *****, who does he think
he is? Always talking big in front of television cameras. Why, he himself
has flagged off the rally from Deshapriya Park," said an old man in a mini-bus
plying the Japanigate Salt Lake route.
A young co-passenger joined him:
"We only have ourselves to blame for voting for the same party over and
over."
A woman cut him short: "Do you think
the party needs us to vote it to power? It has the machinery to remain
in power forever."
The vehicle was packed with Puja-shoppers
and had to go round in circles for the next two hours until the driver
gave up and the brought it to a halt on Aurobindo Setu. Everyone got off
and walked - headed for the nearest Metro station until they ran into the
mahamichhil awash with banners that read "Say no to jihad". But didn't
this amount to a Left Front jihad against Kolkata's commuters? And being
neither supportive nor against the main players in a war on foreign shores,
we didn't know what we were being punished for.
(The author is on the staff of the
Statesman Kolkata.)
