HVK Archives: Cut, Paste and preserve their calumny
Cut, Paste and preserve their calumny - The Observer
Arun Shourie
()
January 22, 1999
Title: Cut, Paste and preserve their calumny
Author: Arun Shourie
Publication: The Observer
Date: January 22, 1999
Namboodiripas' fusillade was just the opening salvo, it turned
out. The Communist Party of India published a series of
pamphlets - Arun Shourie's Slanders Rebutted History has
indicated the Communists, 1942 August Struggle and the Communist
Party of India.... Translated into several languages, these were
distributed far and wide. Today, they are prophylactics anyone
who reads them will be immunised against the abuse of these
'leading intellectuals' and their parties!
"This is not the first time that the Quit India movement has been
forked out to slander and attack the communist movement in our
country," began the Foreword by the General Secretary of the CPI,
C Rajeshwara Rao.
"Whenever the ruling circles and reactionary vested interests are
in a tight corner or the communist movement is making headway,
they would dig up old fables to whip up anti-Communist
prejudices. The pet theme is the so-called 'betrayal' of the
freedom struggle in 1942 by the united Communist Party of India.
Such things have happened a number of times in the past, even as
late as 1975, during the days of Emergency imposed by Mrs Indira
Gandhi' - that last bit was truly audacious! For it was the
General Secretary's very own Communist Party which had supported
Mrs Gandhi's Emergency!
"Now the extreme reaction is worried because of the forging of
left unity through the united struggles of the toiling people and
also its gathering round of democratic allies," the General
Secretary pronounced. "Hence this resurrection of the ghost of
1942 once again by Mr Arun Shourie in order to isolate the
communist movement by fanning anti-communism."
"One would have ignored these attacks since we know very wen that
this is not the first time that such attacks have been leveled
against us," the publication declared. "Arun Shourie, howsoever
his journalistic talent may be, stands no comparison to such
eminent personalities who have attacked us in the past. The
eminent barrister, Langford James, of Meerut Conspiracy Case
called us anti-God, anti-family, anti-decent everything with no
sense of humour. History vindicated us. The Communist Party of
India grew from strength to strength since those days of 1929.
Today the Communist Movement is a strength to reckon with."
What all this had to do with the facts which I had set out, what
I had to do with that barrister of 1929 was and remains a
mystery. But 'devastating refutation' it was! And remember the
line, 'One would have ignored these attacks....' - it too is a
standard one. The facts which have been brought to light, even
more so those who have brought the facts to light are always
beneath their dignity to answer. In his article 'refuting' what
I had written, Panikkar had been the embodiment of lofty self-
abnegation: "The alternative of suing for defamation the likes of
Shourie is below one's dignity.... "
Now that a heap of new facts have been revealed, he is loftier
still - Shourie is not a historian, he is a mythologist.... a
political pornographer.... I shall not dignify him by answering
his diatribe....
Apart from everything else, one reason it is a waste of one's
time to do so is that the dunce is not going to be able to
comprehend the reality in any case. "It will be a waste of
effort and also good space to refute this nonsense which betrays
Shourie's utter Ignorance of history and world events," the
Communist Party publication continued.
"We do not want to go into his vapid nonsensical utterances in
the last installment," wrote the Communist Party publication.
"They are tarred with the same rotten anti-Communist stuff with
the hackneyed claim that communists are but the agents of Moscow
(or rather of the Soviet Union) and as such they km to be treated
with contempt. (On the contrary, my argument had been that
precisely for this reason they ought to be treated with wariness,
that their potential for harming the country, for poisoning
discourse must not be ignored!)
"Even a cursory reading of the names of the Communist Party
members who have found their way from other streams Of the
national movement, either of the national revolutionary or of the
orthodox Gandhian type (And what about those who saw through the
Communist Party, including several of the topmost functionaries
of the Party, and left it?) and the whole host of intellectuals
who have adored (sic) the ranks of the Communist Party, and the
large mass of workers and peasants who have acquired a new
stature in their life by joining and working for the Communist
Party would belie Arun Shourie's vile slanders."
Suppose for a moment that all the intellectuals of India had
fallen to 'adoring' the ranks of the Communist Party, that every
worker and peasant had become a devotee of the Party, how would
that alter the assistance the Party had rendered to the British?
The 'this-is-an-old-charge' defence again: "These slanders
themselves are not of Arun Shourie's original imagination either;
they are products of a diseased and jaundiced view of the state
of affairs which cannot bear the thought of the ordinary worker
and peasant, of the ordinary man taking part and having a say in
the political life of the country......"
Mockery, derision, scorn, the charge of conspiracy, of secret
funds being pumped in by un-named forces, the charge that the
critic is privilege-personified and therefore cannot stand the
fact that, because of the struggles put up by the Left, the
masses are coming into their own - an avalanche to scare everyone
from doing what this fellow has done. "The argument would be
similar to say, 'When did you last stop beating your wife?'," the
Party publication declared. "This pearl of wisdom which Shourie
seems to be bestowing cannot just be called a fool's paradise in
which he may be lurking. It is a dangerous game to sow
dissensions In the minds of the young political workers. And
there are many other interests in the country who are financing
it as is evident from various translations and other media
coverage that have gone with it."
But hope also, confidence too - lest the rank and file lose
heart: "But truth is truth and must stand out, even when Shourie
indulges in making a lot of 'shor' (noise), but with a purpose no
doubt."
The great names who saw the light and acknowledged that the
Communists are the ones who had been right .... : "They all did
this out of a process of understanding of national events in the
context of international developments which is beyond the mental
horizon of Arun Shourie or similar other anti-Communist scribes
who have slandered us in the past...." Two key points in that -
the ones who criticise them are deficient in understanding, and
they are congenitally anti-Communist.
That last bit - about being congenitally anti-Communist - is
doubly believed: On metaphysical grounds, as well as practical
ones. Once you believe in a religion which maintains that the
Revelation has been handed to it alone, it necessarily follows
that, if a person does not see the truth of that religion, there
is something congenitally wrong with him! In totalitarian
societies - Stalin's Soviet Union which our Communists so adored
- there is a practical reason too: For anyone to stand against
the received Line in such a set up, he must necessarily be
congenitally mad!
"It is difficult for Arun Shourie to realise this, devoid as he
is of any political perspective" - the person in question can be
said to have 'political perspective' only when and if he reaches
the same conclusions as The Theory dictates!
As the man lacks elementary political understanding, it is always
pointless to check up the facts which such a person has adduced:
I had published extensive extracts from a 120-page report which
the Communist Party had submitted to the British narrating the
assistance its members were rendering by sabotaging the Quit
India Movement. "The so-called 120-page document," the
publication scoffed, "unfortunately I thought it a waste of time
to count whether it was actually 120-pages as Shourie seems to
have done. " Exactly what these historians maintained when I
nailed the concoction they had put out: Of 'rational' having,
been surreptitiously changed to 'national' in the ICHR
Resolution, of three of the five objectives having been deleted
from the Resolution.
Hence, the confidence in the future: "We are aware that the four
articles by Arun Shourie both in English and other languages are
designed particularly to create a rift between the left and the
other democratic forces. We have every confidence that this will
fail and our healthy national movement will work steadily towards
the goal of bringing about the social transformation through the
path of peace, consolidation of national freedom, and socialism."
Shourie's series, began another publication which the Communist
Party put out, "is a long chain of distortions, canards and
slander against the Communist Party of India, the international
communist movement and the Soviet Union..." "From 1944 onward
(and even earlier) paid pen-pushers and agents of imperialism and
the bourgeoisie have repeatedly run slander campaigns against the
CPI and the USSR..." Hansraj Vohra... Langford James, the
barrister again...., "the notorious Minoo Masani and later on his
worthy 'disciple' Sitaram Goel"... "Naturally enough questions
are being asked by people all over India: Why has Shourie started
this foul campaign now?... " That is always a useful question to
ask: When you can't answer a person on facts, ask: "But why now?"
India carries out its fist nuclear explosion on 18 May 1974 at
Pokhran. And what does the redoubtable representative of the
Communists ask in the Lok Sabha? "We have been told that we have
(had) the capability for a long time, we could have set off this
blast much earlier, if we wanted to. Well, if we could have set
it off much earlier, we could have set it off much later also.
My question is about the timing of it. There must be some reason
behind the timing of this, this particular timing of 18th May. I
am not clear about it."
Next, redouble authority by quoting each other! That is twice-
blessed: It doubles the weight of your assertion, and, as the
comrade is being cited as an authority, it doubles his weight for
the future! And so the CPI publication fortified the question it
had posed - the hardy perennial, 'But why now?'- by citing what E
M 8 Namboodiripad had asked!
"Reputed Communist leader and General Secretary of the CPI(M) E M
S Namboodiripad," it said, "has queried: 'Why should Arun Shourie
have taken up the shop-soiled wares of Communist Betrayal in
1942, 40 years after the Quit India struggle started?'"
And the answer too was fortified by citing E M S once again: "The
seasoned anti-Communist Minoo Masani promptly jumped into the
fray, in defence of Shourie.... E M S sharply retorts: 'What Mr
Shourie himself and Mr Masani are afraid of is thus the coming
together of opposition parties not opposed to the Communists, but
cooperating with them. This is exactly what I suspected in my
Bombay press conference.'..." "Thus the cat is out of the bag,"
the publication proclaimed in triumph taking E M S' assertion as
proof.
"Large segments of the non-Communist non-left opposition parties
have repeatedly joined hands with the Communist-led left
opposition, both against the authoritarian forces led by Indira
Congress as wen as against right-wing communal and divisive
forces like the BJP and others. This has alarmed both Indira
Gandhi and her entourage, as well as the BJP, RSS and their
allies. Shourie and Masani have come out as their spokesmen and
in their desperate efforts to drive a wedge between the
Communists and the non-Communist opposition parties. In this
foul effort, what better weapon can they take up than the shop-
soiled ware of anti-Communist, anti-Soviet canard?"
Thus, congenitally anti-Communist, vile motives, desperation of
the critic - all there!
Next, a repeat of denunciation-by-association: "let us now have a
brief look at the 'noble' anti-Communist predecessors of Arun
Shourie!," the publication proceeds. Hansraj Vohra... Minoo
Masani... And now comes Arun Shourie who is supposed to be a
talented journalist but who has been exposed as a communalist...
And who has published his articles? The Illustrated Weekly, of
India which has also published an article (among the hundreds it
would have published in the period!) 'The RSS will stay' by an
RSS member. And so the truth manifest: "The communists must go
and the RSS must stay - the 'Weekly--Shourie-Masani tie-up is now
crystal clear! This is the basic reason why Shourie has picked
up from the dustbin of history the discarded weapon of anti-
communism!"
Forty pages of such sterling refutations in one publication,
twenty-three pages in another. All leading to the conclusion at
once triumphal and defiant, and comic: "The CPI is a party of
heroes and martyrs of freedom struggle as well as of class
battles. The Shouries and Masanis can wear the shop-soiled dirty
shirt of anti-communism as long as they like, but their place is
in the dung-heap of history! The combined imperialist armies
tried to destroy the young Soviet State. They failed. Hitler
tried it too and was destroyed in turn.
"Today the Reagans and Thatchers are again trying to play the
same dirty game. They too will meet the fate of Hitler and
Mussolini! So also will their paid henchmen, who spatter mud at
the communists! Like old man Galileo facing the inquisition and
like our own Dimitrov, facing the butcher Goering, we Indian
communists also hurl defiance at the face of all our reactionary
detractors and persecutors and with rock-like conviction,
resolutely declare: Nonetheless, the Earth goes forward, and all
roads lead to Communism!"
Amen!
Twin lessons in that. To roll back their untruth, we must
immunise ourselves against their verbal terrorism. And among the
easy prophylactics is to cut out and store their vituperation -
in less than no time it mutates into the ridiculous.
The press conferences and pamphlets were hurled at me in 1984.
In 1986 in his A History of Indian Freedom Struggle, E M S
Namboodiripad acknowledged that communists had collaborated with
the British - or rather, that they "did not hesitate to establish
contact with the government and accept the assistance...."! -
during the 'Quit India' Movement.
In 1984, as we have just seen, the Communists were proclaiming,
"Nonetheless, the Earth goes forward, and all roads lead to
Communism." In 1989 the Berlin Wall was pulled down....
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