Book review: Govind Pansare Had Some Lessons For the Left, If They Would Only Pay Attention
Govind Pansare: Words Matter:
Writings against Silence
Reviewed by Monobina Gupta
Govind Pansare was not
among the nationally well known faces of the Communist Party of India (CPI),
even though it was his political home for over six decades. Tragically, it was
Pansare’s assassination in February 2015 that catapulted the CPI leader to the
centre of national discourse. Prior to his murder, not many beyond Maharashtra,
where he was based all his life, knew about the richness of his innovative
work, his scholarship, and his organic links with the people he spent most of
his time with.
Reading Pansare’s
writings in the recently published book Words Matter: Writings against
Silence, I wondered why his work did not get the attention it deserves
during his life time, even within his own party. These diverse writings – he
authored 21 books – clearly distinguish Pansare from run-of-the-mill communist
leaders, many of whom despite their ordinariness, have become well known faces
representing the party. His relative marginalisation seems to be a consequence
of the larger unquestioned practices that have become normal fare in communist
parties today.
Pansare, along with
M.M. Kalburgi and Narendra Dhabolkar, whose murders captured national
headlines, were all rationalists. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that
religion is one arena where his distinctive mode of intellectual inquiry is on
full display. In his work, the communist leader reckoned with questions like:
how can communist parties – which believe in and practise atheism – reach out
to vast numbers of deeply religious people? What kind of popular cultural
idioms do they need to evolve that move beyond a ‘class only’ approach? These
are questions that have a direct bearing on contemporary politics in India
where aggressive forms of religious fundamentalism have rendered Left-Liberals
quite helpless in the political sphere.
While Pansare
reflected at length on the complexities of religious and political mobilisation
for Left forces in the country, Left parties as a whole shunned deeper
intellectual exercises to understand the politics of religion. Instead, the
Left parties clung to unchanging formulations year after year, decade after
decade. Consider for instance the deadening language of the section on communalism
in the CPI-M’s organisation report presented at the party’s Kolkata plenum in
December 2015. Para 1.187 of the document states: “Utilising the intellectuals
with us and our contacts with democratic intellectuals and prominent
personalities, we should set up joint platforms against communalism. We should
use the intellectual resources and the research centres that we have to produce
political and ideological material for the campaign against communalism.”
These words are
typical of the Left’s general tendency to reduce its fight against communalism
to a string of (failed) electoral strategies. The latest example of this comes
from the politically bankrupt and disastrous Left-Congress alliance in the
recent elections in Bengal. The language deployed by the Left to wean people
away from communalism has been no different from that used by so-called secular
parties like the Congress or Samajwadi Party. However, while the latter of
these parties has successfully leveraged caste arithmetic in its favour, Left
parties have, for too long, been slow to react on that front as well.
In his writings on
religion, Pansare seems to ask more interesting questions and spell out
potentially more fruitful strategies. For example, he writes: “On the one hand,
we should not hesitate to explain religion in a straightforward language. We
should note the historical role played by religion, and at the same time
explain how the established system has used the miserable and helpless in their
place.” He goes on to explain how communist parties should deconstruct religion
and how it has been used by vested interest groups to acquire power and wealth.
“We should not spare any effort in showing how religion has been used by the
rulers to further their vested interests and explain this to the exploiters.
But we should be sympathetic to those who have fallen victim to religious
bigotry.”
Delving deeper into
the question of communist parties’ engagement with people who are religious,
Pansare cites Lenin’s response to the question of whether believers can be
admitted into the party. Lenin was of the opinion that millions of workers,
peasants and the poor would stand to be excluded from membership if the party
shut its doors on believers. He maintained that his “party is not a debating society
between believers and non-believers.” It is this deep attention to local
conditions, to the intricate histories of caste and religion that appear to set
Pansare apart from the most prominent faces of the Left movement today.
In contrast to what is
often the Left’s dismissive attitude of religion, Pansare emphasises that
“revolutionaries” need to intellectually engage with religion: “All the
revolutionaries in the world have had to think about religion. They did so by
putting in front of them two sections of society. One section is that of
oppressors using religion to exploit. The other is that of the exploited and
the poor who have taken shelter under religion with false hope.”
However, Pansare also
argued that to liberate the masses from the clutches of religion, one has to
analyse it in specific social contexts. The views revolutionaries have of
religion, he writes, “must be based on the social conditions of the time. It
may be convenient for those who wish to interpret the world to go on repeating
the same views irrespective of time and space. Such a position does not help
those who wish to ‘change the world.’”
In observing that
“religion thus occupies a singular space as far as the scope, depth and
continuity of its impact on society is concerned”, Pansare seems to suggest
that mere sloganeering will not effectively challenge the increasing
politicisation of religion, or wean people away from such a process. The pull
of religion is perhaps stronger than most identities. It is not enough to
understand religious mobilisation either in purely electoral terms or simply as
a subset of questions related to class. The matter is far more complex.
Pansare therefore
asks: “What are the reasons for it? No system in society survives without
reason. It does not become universal unnecessarily. It does not create hegemony
for no reason. There is something in religion that fulfils a social need.” In the chapter
introducing him, author and translator Uday Narkar writes that Pansare “was
perhaps the only Left leader in Maharashtra who was struggling to engage with
the people’s imagination.” At a time when the masses at large seem
disillusioned with dogmatic party line and staid politics, getting back in
touch with “the people’s imagination” – even if to critically interrogate it –
could be well worth the effort.
What Left parties need
right now is to revive a culture of intellectual debate – one in which
grassroots leaders like Pansare (there surely are many more such invisible and
restless party intellectuals away from the glare of publicity) can make a
worthy contribution. It is equally necessary for communist parties to
make space for dissident opinions on critical subjects like religion and caste
rather than penalise them, for the debate to lead to a genuinely different
conversation.
see also
"Those who are obsessed by language finally come to the conviction that there is nothing but interpretation" Stanley Rosen in Hermeneutics as Politics (1987)
Militarism and the coming wars
Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies - The New School for Social Research
Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies - The New School for Social Research
The Abolition of truth
RSS tradition of manufacturing facts to suit their ideology
Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism
RSS tradition of manufacturing facts to suit their ideology
Satyagraha - An answer to modern nihilism
