The Philosophy of Number
The Philosophy of Number - by Dilip Simeon
NB: This paper is due to appear in a volume entitled Communalism in Post-colonial India Changing Contours; Edited by Mujibur Rehman; Routledge India (2015). It was completed in 2013, and discusses why our understanding of communal politics is constrained from the outset by the faulty concepts we use, which only serve to re-inforce communal ideologies. DS
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to
abolish countries and nationality. The working men have no country. We cannot
take from them what they have not got - Marx
& Engels
The foundation of power is somewhere other than this
or that person or this or that dynasty, which could be said to incarnate it. If
God is absent, there are only human beings left, and the matter of sovereignty
- its foundation - can only be elucidated among them. Sovereignty is a human
not a divine matter.
Gerard Mairet
But now our requirements have changed, and the facts
have changed behind us
- Hilary Mantel
- Hilary Mantel
Introduction
It is difficult to judge
which is the more grievous of our predicaments: the acceptability (for a large
number of Indians) of mass murder as a fact of life; or our unwillingness to understand
communalism outside of a communal lens. To put it differently, many people
consider the theft of money to be a greater evil than the assassination of
large numbers of people; and even when we try to understand genocidal events, most
of the time we end up with a variant of the proposition that ‘my murderers are better
than yours.’ And in a country where even atheists are cast as Hindu, Muslim or
Sikh etc, an obsessive awareness of religious identity tends to colour all
discourses, even theoretical ones, about communalism – ‘my communalists are not
as bad as yours’, or even, ‘my communalists are not communalists at all, yours
are.’
Despite the terrible tragedies that have convulsed South
Asia over the past century, it appears we are no closer to an
understanding of the most intractable issue in modern Indian history than we
were seven decades ago. Our consciences and minds are held in a vice-like grip,
and the very vocabulary of our utterances only generates misconception,
self-deceit and further animus. Incessant violence and hatred have resulted in
a nihilist situation.
In the period between the two
assaults on the Babri Masjid, there took place a political conversation in the office
of the Indian Peoples’ Front, a front organization (now defunct), of the CPI
(ML). A prominent leader of the ML party was hosting a discussion on
contemporary issues with public intellectuals. The conversation veered to the
matter of Advani’s 1990 Rath Yatra - Advani’s arrest had led to the downfall of
the V.P. Singh government. The Yatra had been obliged to skip Chhatisgarh, on
account of the resistance of the Chhatisgarh Mukti Morcha led by Shankar Guha
Niyogi, who was later assassinated. I asked
the leader why, when Advani’s pilgrimage of hate could be turned away from Chhatisgarh
by strong workers resistance, the CPI (ML) did not turn it away from the areas
in Bihar where it had its strongest mass
movements.
The answer was symptomatic of the leftist common sense about communalism. He replied that if the Party had done so, the ‘people would have assumed we were siding with one community against the other.’ For this theoretician, the issue was (by implication) not one of upholding lawful government or the constitutional obligation to protect historical monuments; rather, what was happening was a conflict between communities. It did not call for a defence of democracy against mob violence, or an exposure of the claims of communal groups to ‘represent’ entire communities, it was a Hindu-Muslim issue, and the best way out of it was to get ‘community leaders’ to sort it out amicably. Since the communist position on bourgeois democracy is deeply ambivalent, its position on fascism is equally compromised. However, Indian communists have not theorized fascism at all, so the comrades’ position reflected the stance of an entire spectrum of left opinion on communalism.
The answer was symptomatic of the leftist common sense about communalism. He replied that if the Party had done so, the ‘people would have assumed we were siding with one community against the other.’ For this theoretician, the issue was (by implication) not one of upholding lawful government or the constitutional obligation to protect historical monuments; rather, what was happening was a conflict between communities. It did not call for a defence of democracy against mob violence, or an exposure of the claims of communal groups to ‘represent’ entire communities, it was a Hindu-Muslim issue, and the best way out of it was to get ‘community leaders’ to sort it out amicably. Since the communist position on bourgeois democracy is deeply ambivalent, its position on fascism is equally compromised. However, Indian communists have not theorized fascism at all, so the comrades’ position reflected the stance of an entire spectrum of left opinion on communalism.
My attempt in this essay is
to place some fresh ideas on this debate. If there is a political and philosophical
corollary to these ideas, it is a plea for moderate speech. Extreme positions
and hyperbolic utterances have become commonplace these days, and very often
emanate from the heart of the establishment. It is doubtful whether meaningful
communication is taking place on burning questions ranging from public
security, political violence and police reform, to women’s rights, education
and criminal justice. Activists of mainstream political parties have been known
engage in hooliganism, and attacks on the freedom of speech and expression have
become the norm.
It is arguable that the Indian constitution is under threat,
not only from declared insurgents, but equally from the actions (and inaction)
of persons sworn to uphold it. The important questions are not reducible to
party politics, and answers to them cannot be found in partisan manifestos. It
is not a Party but a platform of political moderation and social democracy that
is lacking. What we need to question are commonsensical notions, the vocabulary
in use by all protagonists, the concepts that rule without challenge in the
domain of ideas. These concepts include nation,
majority, and minority. Let us begin with a quick look at a little known report
from one of the most violent and tragic periods in Indian history.
A line in the ground
In September 1947,
two Indian communists presented a report to Jawaharlal Nehru that was later
published under the title Bleeding These were the storm troops of various communal parties such as
National Guards of the Muslim League in the Western Punjab, and the Shahidi Dal
of the Akalis and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of the Mahasabha in the
Eastern Punjab. They were actively aided and often actually led by the police
and the military in committing the worst atrocities.. in violence and in
brutality, in the numbers killed (which Syt Shri Prakasha, India’s Ambassador to
Pakistan places at 1 ½ lakhs) in the use of plenty of modern deadly weapons, in
the devastation spread over 14 districts of the Punjab and in the way in which
the police, the military and the entire administration was geared not to stop
the riots but to spread it – the Punjab tragedy is without parallel..
Read the full article in PDF here: http://www.sacw.net/
Also see
Read the full article in PDF here: http://www.sacw.net/
Also see
