Author: Editorial
Publication: The Statesman
Date: January 21, 2005
URL: http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=3&theme=&usrsess=1&id=66332
A Marxist Blend Of Duplicity And
Deception
In the post-Cold War world, the
once catchy communist propaganda jargons such as dialectical materialism,
scientific socialism, dictatorship of the proletariat and democratic centralism
have lost their appeal and relevance. But the Indian Marxists desperately
cling to these stale concepts to impress their lesser comrades and to establish
their credentials as the most rational and public-spirited political class
in the country.
Long on pretence, but short on
performance, the Marxists never tire of patting themselves on the back
for their supposed scientific socio-economic outlook and commitment to
the have-nots. They glibly proclaim that they are "progressive" and shorn
of superstition, bigotry and prejudice of any kind. Never mind, if in the
28th year of the egalitarian Marxist rule in West Bengal, dowry, lynching
women as witches, marrying daughters to dogs and hiring sorcerers' service
to tackle malaria, and refusal to eat food cooked by Muslims and lower
caste Hindus are rampant and thriving in the state.
Convoluted logic
Recently, the atheist CPI-M top
brass displayed how fragile is their adherence to rationality. An editorial
in the party weekly People's Democracy (January 2), reminiscent of the
rantings of the saffron brigade, linked natural disaster to sin, alleging
that the tsunami is the "culmination of a legacy of hate and destruction
that we the people of India overcame in the political sphere in 2004."
Asked for comment on this convoluted logic by the press, the embarrassed
party general secretary in New Delhi was evasive, pleading that he had
had no time to read the party journal yet.
Whether religion is opium or not,
Marxist rhetoric and Marxist rule in West Bengal have failed to turn its
people Godless and irreligious. Party stalwarts follow a selective approach
to practising secularism. Ministers boycott Saraswati bandana at public
functions and excise Ganesh bandana from the Chhou dance sequence, but
do not mind sitting through Kuran telawat at official functions. Party
activists, including many senior office-bearers, actively participate in
pujas and openly and, at times, demonstrably say namaz. There can be no
quarrel with that one's faith is a personal matter that must not interfere
with one's political conviction. What is insufferable, however, is the
Marxists' use of religion with an eye on securing political advantage.
For example, in the last Id ceremony,
a former state minister and presently an MP led the namaz on the Red Road
in the full TV glare. While there was nothing objectionable to that, during
the parliamentary election campaign in his wall writings he had prefixed
"Comrade" to his name in the Hindu-majority areas, but dropped it from
the writings in the Muslim-dominated areas and used his convenient first
name "Mohammed" instead! Though not illegal, it certainly reeked of duplicity
and, yes, bourgeois hypocrisy. Morality and communism have always been
contradictions in terms, opportunism being the overriding element in Marxist
ethos. For the sake of captive minority votes, which account for 22 per
cent of the state electorate, the Left-Front regime has been routinely
turning a blind eye to many illegal and criminal activities of lumpen CPI-M
cadres and supporters in the minority community. Infiltration from Bangladesh
has acquired the proportions of a veritable demographic invasion and has
entirely changed the communal complexion of the border districts. Criminal
and subversive activities of many infiltrators have heightened the insecurity
of the original inhabitants of the border belt, forcing them to leave the
affected areas in droves, selling their houses and land for a song to Muslim
migrants.
Cultivable land
As a result, in the outlying peripheral
areas of Nadia district Hindu inhabitants had owned 60 per cent of the
cultivable land till five years back, but presently their share has now
come down to less than 40 per cent. Keeping mum over this disastrous process
for years, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has been lately decrying
illegal immigration, but has not taken any effective measures to stem the
flow of migrants, let alone deport them.
In line with the scale of infiltration,
mosques and madrassas have been mushrooming on public land, violating government
rules. A feeble attempt by the chief minister to mildly deprecate the unrestrained
growth of these institutions earned him a severe reprimand from the state
party headquarters, forcing him to eat his own words. The state government
spends more than Rs 15 crore annually on madrassa education, focused on
teaching the Kuran and hadis, which is not exactly conducive to instilling
the much-needed secular ethos in our younger generations to promote inter-community
harmony. In contrast, the Left front government has virtually stopped supporting
the traditional Sanskrit seminaries (tols). The reason for such "step-motherly
treatment", in the words of a former head of the department of Sanskrit
of the Calcutta University, known for his proximity to the regime, is the
fear that teaching of Sanskrit would increase the influence of the RSS!
The Kuran, which calls all non-Muslims Kafir and ordains their gratuitous
annihilation, is taught at state expense, but teaching of Sanskrit texts
that unfailingly contain the message of universal brotherhood and harmonious
living together of all living beings is a taboo. Only Marxist morons are
capable of such dastardly distortions and discriminations.
Unchecked radicalisation of Islam
in the post-Mujib era has led to the growth of Jamaat-supported Talibani
terrorist outfits in Bangladesh, which, while wreaking havoc in the country,
also pose a serious threat to the security and stability of the region.
Predictably, the unsavoury developments across the border have been adversely
impacting on sections of the Muslim community in the state, notably in
the border districts. Fundamentalist Muslim clerics in Murshidabad district
have issued fatwas proclaiming social and economic boycott of twenty-odd
Muslim bauls for singing their traditional songs urging peace, unity and
harmony among all human beings. In Bangladesh, the country's High Court
has banned fatwa, but the preudo-secular Marxist regime of West Bengal
has preferred to remain a silent spectator of these atrocities. By banning
last year Tasleema Nasreen's Dwikhandita under pressure from a section
of Muslims and a mullah who publicly instigated the faithful to assault
and humiliate her, the state government had effectively boosted the growth
of Islamic fundamentalism in the state.
Apathetic state
And all that is for the 22 per
cent crucial block Muslim votes needed to retain the Left Front's hold
on power. Twenty-eight years of one-party misrule has turned West Bengal
into a torpid and apathetic state that has given its people the rudest
and most humiliating treatment. Driven by duplicity and deception, the
tyrannical regime successfully maintains a fraudulent façade of
democracy and freedom of the media, but its primary concern is to maintain
the submission of its ubiquitous army of henchmen spread within its party
ranks, the bureaucracy and the opposition parties. Given the will, the
henchmen can collectively oust it from power, but the art of its unimpeded
tyranny lies in giving them privileges and rewards, which they do not wish
to lose, and convincing them that they can hold their own positions only
if the regime keeps its. The more ruthless the repression the easier is
to achieve this because the henchmen also have a guilty fear of what the
people might do to them if their mounting frustration were ever unleashed.
In this darkening situation, the intellectuals could have made a difference,
but wary of losing the crumbs of government largesse, they are "strangers
to that vigour of mind, and all the virtues grafted on those passions which
animate our more active spirits." The corrupting and corroding influence
of the incumbent regime has heightened the deadening effect of Bengali
indolence on them. Honourable exceptions apart, there is little enterprise
and less generous sentiments among our intellectuals and, therefore, no
significant social commitment to spearhead any serious movement towards
pulling the hapless state out of the morass of ruinous Marxist misrule.
