Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: November 16, 2007
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1071116/asp/opinion/story_8548040.asp
The intellectual legacy of Bengal now weighs
heavy on it
In the fortnight before Diwali, Calcutta hosted
some unlikely visitors from the heartland of global capitalism. They came
to the city for two reasons: first, to get a feel of a state that has monotonously
elected governments headed by one of the most antediluvian Stalinist parties
to grace bourgeois democracy; second, to experience the interesting story
of a chief minister who has embraced market economics with the passion he
earlier reserved for socialist inefficiency.
On both counts, the visitors had reason to
return satisfied. Never mind the oddity of the American consulate being located
on a street named after Ho Chi Minh (the renaming was done as early as 1969),
Calcutta was a far cry from the drab, grey provincial cities behind the Iron
Curtain. On the surface, it had all the symbols of cosmopolitan modernity;
Stalinist austerity, if present, was definitely a receding phenomenon. The
important thing was that West Bengal was burning with a fierce desire to be
an integral part of the Incredible India story. On his part, the chief minister,
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, lived up to his reputation as an enlightened pragmatist
with a definite vision for West Bengal. "If you hadn't warned me, I would
never have guessed he is a Communist," was the telling remark of one
distinguished visitor who has first-hand experience of an evolving world.
A week, unfortunately, is a long time in politics.
Had the dignitaries returned to Calcutta after the Kali Puja fireworks, they
would have noticed a city seething with anger at the same CPI(M) and the same
chief minister. They would have experienced the latest of the interminable
bandhs that have made life so painful in West Bengal. Turning on the television,
they would have witnessed local celebrities - each one of them proudly flaunting
the "progressive" label - abusing the chief minister as a "liar",
and even comparing him to the ultimate "fascist" ogre, Narendra
Modi. They would have heard self-professed "intellectuals" (an endangered
species that thrives in Calcutta) denounce the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
as a "terrorist" organization hell-bent on appropriating the poor
and enriching blood-sucking capitalists. For the children of the Sixties,
there would have been the additional attraction of protesters singing a local
version of Bob Dylan's immortal "Blowing in the wind".
A spark, the Great Helmsman pronounced, can
light a prairie fire. Were the events of the past week in Nandigram the proverbial
flashpoint for an outpouring of accumulated grievances against a dispensation
that is now perceived to be arrogant and intolerant? Coming within weeks of
the middle class rage over the death of Rizwanur Rahman, there are grounds
to indicate that after 30 years of uninterrupted dominance, anti-incumbency
is finally catching up with the Left Front - and with a vengeance.
What distinguished the CPI(M) dispensation
in West Bengal from other 'normal' state governments was its pretension of
moral superiority. Any other government with such an abysmal long-term record
of economic mismanagement would have been an object of ridicule in circles
where these things matter. Yet, in a country where intellectual discourse
till the mid-Nineties was dominated by a spurious deification of 'equity',
Jyoti Basu became the icon of political sagacity on the strength of an Operation
Barga that yielded windfall electoral returns. The other facets of his 23-year
legacy - the destruction of education, infrastructural collapse, deindustrialization
and the exodus of the professional classes - were expediently glossed over
by an intelligentsia that revelled in the celebration of morbidity and cussed
militancy. A consummate practitioner of banality, Basu reduced a once-vibrant
centre of cosmopolitanism into a provincial backwater, regulated by puffed-up,
petty tyrants in local and coordination committees. Under him West Bengal
became a nice place to get out of.
His successor was, by contrast, much more
audacious. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was among the few Indian communists who
correctly saw in the collapse of the Soviet Union the larger failure of Marxist
economics. On assuming office, he began the slow process of reversing the
Basu legacy. He wooed private investors of all shades assiduously; he realized
the importance of a vibrant Calcutta in the process of economic regeneration;
he tried to undermine the mindless glorification of a political culture centred
on 'struggle'and disruption; and he accorded tacit intellectual validity to
the principle of self-betterment - the driving force behind India's economic
resurgence.
Judged in terms of Stalinist orthodoxy, Bhattacharjee
was undeniably a heretic - maybe even a non-Leninist. However, in the aftermath
of China's endorsement of the free market, that did not constitute a heinous
offence. Where the chief minister came to grief was in contesting the grievance-guilt
syndrome that became the hallmark of Bengali 'progressive' culture since Independence.
Although remarkably austere in personal life, he saw nothing wrong in associating
the symbols of vibrant capitalism with economic growth. His logic was simple:
if West Bengal was to be a partner in India's resurgence, it had to accept
the embellishments of modern capitalism, including lifestyle disparities.
To an intelligentsia nurtured on the romance
of poverty and suffering followed by the exhilaration of struggle, it was
not merely Bhattacharjee's policies that were construed as wrong; his values
were deemed to be offensive. For those who had lived their adult lives shouting
slogans at the gates of closed-down factories, the suggestion that 'peasants'
should allow factories to be built on their pocket-sized holdings was a travesty
and too reminiscent of Rabindranath Tagore's "Dui bigha jamin".
An anti-CPI(M) blogsite of an ultra-radical Bengali "intellectual",
for example, equates parasitic decadence with New Town, Rajarhat.
The opposition of villagers in Singur and
Nandigram to absorption into a manufacturing hub was based on fear and uncertainty
- traditional peasant responses to modernization. Their protests needed to
be handled with care, sensitivity and even generosity. But Bhattacharjee was
in a hurry and this urgency rubbed off on the CPI(M) local committees. Intoxicated
by the monopoly of power, they reacted in the only way known to them - with
an astonishing show of high-handedness. In the past, this approach had always
paid returns; in the age of intrusive 24x7 TV, however, this was no longer
possible. Apart from its known political opponents, the CPI(M) now has to
confront the fury of the very intelligentsia that was a co-conspirator in
its crusade to transform Bengali Enlightenment into Bengali Endarkment.
Do not, for a minute, mistake the aesthetic
repugnance of CPI(M)-inspired terrorism in Nandigram with the old-fashioned
liberal outrage. The intellectual divide in West Bengal is largely spurious;
both sides mirror each other.
It was the Left that introduced the culture
of bloody retribution in West Bengal in 1967. Yet, the Bengali intelligentsia's
support for the Left and its demented offsprings was most pronounced when
it coincided with relentless violence. The Naxalite movement received more
intellectual, celluloid and poetic endorsements than any other murderous cult.
The most important theoretical contribution of its bhadralok mentor was in
advocating the elimination of the "class enemy" with a knife or
axe (rather than a gun) because physical contact facilitated a more meaningful
outpouring of class hatred. The record of post-1947 Bengali intellectualism
is disagreeable.
The spark from Nandigram may or may not engulf
the formidable CPI(M) apparatus. However, its fallout on West Bengal is bound
to be catastrophic. A vision for the regeneration of the state has been dragged
into controversy and stands indicted for its underlying thuggishness.
West Bengal needs change. A change in political
culture is, of course, obligatory. But this has to be preceded by a decisive
rejection of the dominant intellectual legacy of the past 60 years.
