Annihilation - 50 years of Naxalbari
NB: This article appeared under the title 50 years of Naxalbari in CatchNews on May 1, 2017. I post it below with my original title. It is the first of two articles I wrote about the first phase of Naxalism. The second appeared in Outlook on May 15, I've posted it here: Yesterday
once more. I take this opportunity to tell all those who pin their hopes for 'liberation' on systematic killing of real or imagined enemies: hatred and murder feed on themselves. A report today describes unease in Kashmir at the killing of security guards & policemen in a bank robbery. Some supporters of the Kashmiri tehreek are upset because the dead (all Kashmiri Muslims) were non-combatants. I hope people will extend their sensitivity to all human life and realise that violence is an unending spiral, there is no final solution to be achieved by it. Naxalism is an expression of nihilism, the word with the same root as 'annihilation'. The entire world is gripped by it these days, and it will result in nothing but an endless cycle of destruction - destruction of time, truth and life. I have written more about this theme here, and in the links provided below - DS
The nihilism of the Maoists is the mirror-image of the nihilism of a ruthless establishment. The first is suicidal, the second geared toward eternal conflict
Annihilation
The richest sense of irony I ever felt was
evoked by a PTI report dated May 13,
1997, reporting
from Siliguri that a bust of Charu Mazumdar had been decapitated. It went on to report the bandh
called by Naxalite leaders ‘to
protest against the cowardly act.’ Shop-keepers were forced to down shutters. The
report then cited the town mayor who condemned the incident and said ‘the
miscreants who beheaded the bust could not have any political identity, they
were simply hooligans’ - the standard Indian cliche for
condemnation of insults to great personages.
27 years prior to this cowardly act, Calcutta
(sorry, that was the name then) witnessed the Naxalite imitation of Mao’s
Cultural Revolution. This consisted in incendiary attacks on schools and colleges,
violent disruption of examinations and the destruction of portraits and statues
of famous figures from Bengal’s history, including Rammohun Roy, Iswar Chandra
Vidyasagar and Rabindranath Tagore – not to mention Mahatma Gandhi. Overriding protests
by comrades such as Sushital Ray Chaudhuri, Charu Mazumdar and his fiery ally
the journalist Saroj Datta defended the iconoclasm of the revolutionary
students, including their lack of knowledge of what they were doing: ‘are the youth fully aware of the
political implications?... Have they analysed the work of those, whose statues
they are destroying? No they have not! But still, they are doing the right
things.’ He praised ‘revolutionary’ excesses and claimed ‘the masses never
make mistakes.’
The celebration of mindless violence is now
manifest in several quarters, not least in the name of the Nation, the Cow and
the Millat. Outbursts of violent rage are part of life, but it is another
matter when they become intrinsic to some grand political design. Albert Camus famously
distinguished between crimes of passion and crimes of logic – the latter being
his name for violence in the name of History. It is time we recognised that the
two have combined in the politics of the past century, wherein the passions of
the many were (and continue to be) deliberately manipulated by the few in the
service of their projects. Some ideologues have learned to infect politics with
the masculine yearning for military glory and revenge against real or imaginary
enemies. Such are the utopian visions of communalists of all hues. Others claim
to possess knowledge of the truth of history – or its laws - which to them certifies
the inevitable victory of their cause.
Nihilism and ideology
All such movements base themselves on the
claim to superior knowledge; and an advance self-exoneration for crimes they
have committed or plan to commit. They are ideological movements, which by
definition possess (or are possessed by) an absolute truth. But truth has a universal ambience, and cannot be tied
to any particular nation or state or religion. Nor need we believe that the
Creator of the Universe is particularly fond of this or that sliver of ground
on an insignificant planet.
Ideology is the contemporary manifestation of
religion. In its early days the French Revolution attempted to enforce an
atheistic worship of the Nation. The deification of the Nation soon assumed
equivalence with the nationalisation of God. Within the communist tradition
(notwithstanding Marx’s powerful sociological analysis of capitalism), there emerged
the Leninist doctrine of the infallibility of the Party. In this case absolute
truth was guaranteed by the laws of History, known to leaders like Lenin,
Stalin and Mao. Given the multiplicity
of claimants to knowledge of God’s will or History’s laws, ideological
scenarios are theatres of permanent conflict, both within and between the
various camp-followers. Ideological movements are incipiently totalitarian, and
the state-systems they seek to establish are imitations of theocracy, regimes
of truth. Such
movements are accompanied by extreme violence, directed
both against the people they seek to represent; as well as their deemed
enemies.
The never-ending character of ideologically
inspired conflict in our time should alert us to its nihilist aspect. ‘Nihilism’
and ‘annihilation’ have the same root: nihil
or pure nothingness. (Annihilation
was Charu Mazumdar’s favourite word). The perpetual suspension of the present
for the sake of an ever-retreating glorious future is an expression of
nihilism. So is the equivalence of speech with silence, the celebration of
death in the name of martyrdom and the disregard for life, the treatment of
humans as bio-mass. Ideologues are uncomfortable with ordinariness, and seek to
disrupt it. Undoubtedly, the brutality and injustice of our social order
inspires some of us to destroy it root and branch. But the organisation of a
killing machine as a means to obtain the final solution to injustice is a step into
an abyss. In my knowledge the only study that
characterised Naxalism as a variant of nihilism was Rabindra Ray’s The
Naxalites and their ideology.
Aside from reminding us that Naxalism is intellectually driven; and that its
stress upon correct social knowledge as the precursor to a correct strategy is
common to the entire communist tradition; he raises - crucially - the
possibility that it is not the ‘correct analysis’ that leads to the appropriate
strategy, but rather, the already-desired strategy that seeks its own analysis,
its own ‘right line.’
Naxalbari: Naxalism is the colloquial name for Indian Maoism. Its organisational form was inaugurated in 1969 as the CPI (ML).
Extreme factionalism accompanied the birth of this party, with dissenting
groups being dubbed counter-revolutionaries. Charu’s faction insisted that
India’s constitution was a mask for a semi-colonial system and had to be
overthrown by a peasant rebellion similar to the one led by the Chinese
Communist Party. The Telengana uprising of 1946-51 was a point of inspiration.
The CPI (ML) insisted on a boycott of democratic politics in favour of immediate
organisation of an agrarian armed struggle.
Naxalism was never a
movement of peasants and tribals seeking to overthrow state power. Rather this
theoretical assertion was made by those who claim to represent the popular interest.
The right to make this claim was derived from what the earliest Naxalites
referred to as ‘revolutionary authority’. The mantle of authority was obtained from
the Chinese Communist Party led by Chairman Mao. Their early
attraction to China as centre of world revolution soon led to a blind support
for Chinese national interests. This was accompanied by an evocation of the
violent stream within Indian nationalism, harking back to Anushilan and
Jugantar. Well might our commentators refer to them as anti-national –
Naxalites see themselves as inheritors of anti-colonial terrorism, and as
genuine patriots.
Leaving aside the theoreticians, what attracts
ordinary people to Maoism? The reason is not far to seek, but is papered over
by the apologists of the system that has sustained Naxalism. It cannot be
sufficiently emphasised that violence irrupts not on account of a lack of
‘development’ or from economic causes, but from humiliation and injustice.
Those who need evidence could research the forced land-acquisitions, arrests of
peaceful activists, forced resettlements of villagers, molestation of women and
incarceration of poor people for years on end, that are scattered all over the
areas affected by corporate development. They could also consider the
allegation (November 2014) by a retired DG of the CRP that certain state
governments have a vested interest in insurgency.
Naxalism has nothing to do with tribal
matters per se. Rather it is the misfortune of Indian’s Adivasis that the lands
they inhabit are rich in minerals. The history of industrialisation in these
regions is a story which can reveal much about the origins of Maoist extremism,
but will our fire-breathing TV pundits and gung-ho patriots bother to examine
the facts? When people despair of obtaining fair treatment at the hands of
state and society, they become attracted to vengeful ideologies.
The nihilism
of the Maoists is the mirror-image of the nihilism of a ruthless establishment.
The first is suicidal, the second geared toward eternal conflict. Both sides
could end the bloodshed easily if they wanted to – all it requires is the courage
to critically examine one’s own conduct and admit that ordinary people need
peace. Above all it requires that they remove their ideological spectacles and
get back to ordinary life – something that will include struggles for justice
but not murder. There’s no glorious red future waiting for us, nor a corporate
utopia with malls accessible to everyone. But may we dare aspire to pass our
days without fear?
Are Indians racist? Notes on Ideology
Ephemeralization: A Weapon Against Capital
Jairus Banaji: Fascism, Maoism and the Democratic Left
Ephemeralization: A Weapon Against Capital
Jairus Banaji: Fascism, Maoism and the Democratic Left
The Broken Middle (on the 30th anniversary of 1984)
