JNU SFI unit condemns murder of T P Chandrasekharan.

By Dilip -
The Jawaharlal Nehru University unit of the Students’ Federation of India has said in a pamphlet that it could not defend such unconvincing political decisions or remain silent on acts like the recent murder of Revolutionary Marxist Party leader T. P. Chandrasekharan in Kerala, in which several CPI (M) functionaries have been arrested so far. The SFI national leadership has thus far remained silent on these issues.


Days after passing a resolution at its general body meeting criticising the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s decision to support Pranab Mukherjee’s candidature for President, the Jawaharlal Nehru University unit of the Students’ Federation of India has said in a pamphlet that it could not defend such unconvincing political decisions or remain silent on acts like the recent murder of Revolutionary Marxist Party leader T. P. Chandrasekharan in Kerala, in which several CPI (M) functionaries have been arrested so far. The SFI national leadership has thus far remained silent on these issues.

“Neither can SFI-JNU defend unconvincing political decisions in public like support for Mr. Mukherjee in the Presidential elections, nor can it remain silent on acts like the recent murder of RMP leader T. P. Chandrasekharan in Kerala. Several CPI (M) functionaries have been arrested in the case so far, while investigations continue. The outrageous statement made by CPI (M) leader M. M. Mani has only made matters worse. This has become a major political issue in Kerala as well as JNU. The SFI-JNU has taken a principled position on the issue and demanded action against the guilty irrespective of political affiliations. The all-India leadership of the SFI has not adopted any stand on these issues till date,” said the pamphlet, signed by SFI-JNU president Anagha and joint-secretary Mohammed Altamash.

Criticising alleged attempts in the media to portray the SFI-JNU decision as an act against or in favour of certain individuals, the pamphlet said such interpretations “reflect a shallow understanding of the SFI’s legacy of seriously engaging with political-ideological debates.” The SFI-JNU said it was forced to convene the general body and initiate a debate in the face of strident criticism from other Left organisations on campus like the All-India Students’ Association and the SFI’s dipping fortunes in the JNU student union elections since 2007.

“The elections were held in the aftermath of the political developments in West Bengal, surrounding Singur and Nandigram. In the JNUSU elections held in March 2012, the SFI failed to reverse the adverse electoral trend witnessed in 2007. Organisational reviews in this period have identified both political and organisational reasons for the poor performance. However, the primacy of political factors, primarily those related to Singur-Nandigram and the general state of the Left movement in the country has been noted. In a Left-leaning political campus like JNU, these developments have eroded the SFI’s support base among the progressive and democratic minded students. The developments since 2007 have made the SFI vulnerable to attacks of “double-speak” by the ultra Left, which has gained at SFI’s cost,” the pamphlet added.
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-newdelhi/article3622170.ece

Also see: Conduct of a Perfect Murder

SFI dissolves JNU unit that attacked CPI(M) on Pranab

NB: The SFI members who decided to uphold their political judgement & conscience by condemning the murder of T. P. Chandrasekharan deserve the support & appreciation of all democrats. It shows they understand that the culture of brutality is destructive of the most basic principles of socialism. This news comes alongside the condemnation of the 'annihilation line' by Sabyasachi Panda, a senior Maoist leader in Odisha. See Extracts from Sabyasachi Panda's letter to Maoist leadership. For decades the relation between socialism & democracy - and the parallel issue of violence - has remained the most crucial issue in  Left politics. I hope the younger generation of socialist activists will reach across partisan barriers, & evolve more humane, inclusive & democratic practices in their work. Readers may kindly peruse the excellent essay by Paul Zacharia Conduct of a Perfect Murder and my EPW article, A Hard Rain Falling - as contributions to a dialogue on the corrosive problem of vigilantism in Indian politics: Dilip

See also


Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the PUDR stat
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certainty which a c
Read more

Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism

By Dilip -
NB: This is the text of my address to the Eighth East-West Inter-cultural Relations Conference held at Ramjas College, the University of Delhi, on March 17.  The details of the conference may be read here . A pdf file of the address is downloadable here  -  DS Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism Dilip Simeon Keynote address to the Eighth East-West Inter-cultural Relations Conference Ramjas College, March 17-18 2016 Zilu stopped for the night at Stone Gate. The gatekeeper said, Where are you from? Zilu said, From the household of Confucius. The gatekeeper said, The one who knows there’s nothing that can be done but keeps on trying?  -  from the Analects of Confucius (14:40) What is truth? asked jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer – Francis Bacon In fact it is more correct to say Truth is God than to say God is Truth – Mohandas Gandhi Introduction: The human being is the speaking animal, the discerner of good and evil. This featur
Read more

Rudyard Kipling: critical essay by George Orwell (1942)

By Dilip -
Mother of Cities to me, For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait  Rudyard Kipling , To the City of Bombay "Few people who have criticized England from the inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter patriot" : George Orwell IT WAS a pity that Mr. Eliot should be so much on the defensive in the long essay with which he prefaces this selection of Kipling's poetry, but it was not to be avoided, because before one can even speak about Kipling one has to clear away a legend that has been created by two sets of people who have not read his works. Kipling is in the peculiar position of having been a byword for fifty years. During five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there. Mr. Eliot never satisfactorily explains this fact, because in answering the shal
Read more

Three Versions of Judas: Jorge Luis Borges

By Dilip -
Image
In  Asia Minor or in Alexandria, in the second century of our faith (when Basilides was announcing that the cosmos was a rash and malevolent improvisation engineered by defective angels), Nils Runeberg might have directed, with a singular intellectual passion, one of the Gnostic monasteries. Dante would have destined him, perhaps, for a fiery sepulcher; his name might have augmented the catalogues of heresiarchs, between Satornibus and Carpocrates; some fragment of his preaching, embellished with invective, might have been preserved in the apocryphal Liber adversus omnes haereses  or might have perished when the firing of a monastic library consumed the last example of the  Syntagma . Instead, God assigned him to the twentieth century, and to the university city of Lund. There, in 1904, he published the first edition of  Kristus och Judas ; there, in 1909, his masterpiece  Dem hemlige Frälsaren  appeared. (Of this last mentioned work there exists a German version,  Der heimliche Heilan
Read more

Goodbye Sadiq al-Azm, lone Syrian Marxist against the Assad regime

By Dilip -
NB:  An interesting obituary to a great intellectual. My knowledge of the situation is limited, but as regards this article,  I'm uncomfortable with the argument that there should be no objection to the participation  of communal parties  in a democratic alliance. My views on this are conditioned by the history of religion-based mobilisations in India, where the communist movement has from time to time allied with communal groups of all colours, with disastrous consequences. Some material on this theme may be read here .  Nor can I agree that Islamists, Hindutva groups or Khalistanis etc. can be described as 'religious parties'. I do not mean to justify alliances with 'secular' tyrants, but to remind anyone who cares to listen, that communalism is also an expression of tyranny.  Communalists proceed on the assumption that membership of a religious community automatically produces a political interest, and strive to create that interest. They enter democratic move
Read more