Dear CM…its Us and Them
The silent rally in Nov 14 against atrocities in Nandigram (click pics for sources and more news)
- 14 March Rally: Related News and Articles
- Kolkata walks for peace in Nandigram
- Kolkata pours heart out, silently
- 15th March Rally: Related News and Articles
- Kolkata celebs march for peace in Nandigram
- Kolkata cultural glitterati split in two over Nandigram
- Artists to stage counter rally amid Nandigram tension
- Pro-CPI(M) intellectuals take out procession
- Rallying support, either way
- A Comparison between the Rallies
- Contrast marks the twins
- CPI(M) ideologue Nilotpal Basu on the Nandigram issue: The Story behind Nandigram
The rally in Nov 15 for peace in Nandigram
Image Sources [and a good place for a CPI(M) perspective on the issues]: Pragoti.org
Believe me dear CM Sir, I am in a balancing act…believe me please! There had been two rallies in this city for the same cause and purpose in successive days; I will document them both through links and I will exactly mirror the series with pics above with series of pics below. All rallies look similar in long shot, but I think I can manage to make the pics of crowds look different (of course there will be links to sources and news!), e.g the 15th rally will be with lots of umbrellas and the 14th without it. In closer shots, the rally on 14th will be peopled largely by Calcuttans with angry posters and banners but the rally of 15th will feature people from all districts, converged to the metropolis in trucks and other conveyances which your party has the famous skill to arrange in lightning speed, tribal villagers showcased and costumed and many banners and posters accusing nobody and bearing no traces of violence, as your intellectuals and pet television channels described its ‘holier-than-thou’-ness. But I walked yesterday and I didn’t bother to walk today. I need to explain my choice and of course I won’t start saying that I don’t support the cause of today’s rally…because then the post ends here…I will explain why, I think, today’s rally cannot claim that cause.
Because it was arrogant, not sincere. It was a ‘payback’ of your intelligentsia to ‘their intelligentsia’. That is not a sincere approach to a call for peace. A supposed rift in civil society (the ’sushil samaj’ as a leading newspaper was irritatingly translating it these days, moderating it today as ‘nagarik samaj’ and another TV channel adding ‘budhsamaj’ as another irritating synonym; I am being reminded of the early 19th century with its Bramho and Arya and other ’samaj’s!) being evident and both your media and not-your-media branding yesterday’s rally as ‘anti-left’. But it is amazing how each day, for the last few days, your people and you are trying to divide the populace as ‘us and them’! Yesterday’s rally was a spontaneous gathering, a historic one in its scale and nature, a ‘citizen’s rally’ spearheaded by no political party as such and you are busy to retort the citizens, showing off your organizational muscles and prowess by today’s rally! To the citizens?!
A citizen’s rally. Yes it was. Of course marked with a distinct irritation with your party, but a platform was prepared which cannot be brought under the umbrella of distinct political parties. Yes, it was a ‘political’ rally, whoever is trying to describe it as ‘a-political’ is wrong even if it is done by certain intellectuals who led it. It is a wrong choice of word intended to convey a correct idea: it was beyond political parties but not beyond ideologies or ‘political sense’. Therefore it was an inclusive platform. Therefore obviously it had its share of participants who are your political opponents, but I believe a large number of people consisting the circa 60,000 were citizens who voted you to power in the last elections. Flashing your cards the next day to prove that you can produce numbers too can never suppress that fact. If that is the case then you are hoodwinking yourself. A counter-rally for peace!
Already your party-workers have labeled the spearheads of yesterday’s rally as reactionaries/opportunists/anti-left and all those predictable things. This is what your party does these days: label first and listen then; the second premise being ’since they are labeled thus they are not worth listening to’. Period. And how would you label us who walked and are not members of any political party? I am trying to imagine… Well, ‘misguided’, ‘misinformed’, ‘misled’ and other mis-somethings are possibilities. Or they have denied it entirely. Like a vernacular newspaper – which speaks like your party’s unofficial newsletter – which devoted only 5-6 lines to the event with a suspicion that its constitution was fishy (based upon evidences of 7 men and a banner within the circa 60,000)!
But let me clear my stance now. I need to clarify why I did not walk today in your great rally. Of course not because of the weather. I wouldn’t have participated in today’s rally even under a clear sky because I don’t believe in walking in a rally for peace where the organizing forces are also one of the organizers of the violence in Nandigram. Your party doesn’t have the ethical right to call such a rally. Therefore wouldn’t have walked if your opponents called the rally too; and the reasons would have been the same.
I am facing many questions which I should answer. First, where were my pangs of conscience when your party workers were hounded in Nandigram for months? I would answer in the same vein of my earlier posts. I lost faith. I lost conviction that you and your voices are telling the truth (I never believe your chief adversaries). I can recall that after the March 14 incident your party voiced similarly that CPI(M) supporters have been evicted from their homes; we were never vocal about it so we are not in a position to decry the incident. I must explain why I lost faith.
It is the rhetoric and the reasoning. Since we did not condemn eviction we cannot morally condemn genocide, is this the reasoning? If this is mathematical logic of your reasoning then I would say that there is something bloody wrong in it! Measuring eviction and genocide in similar terms! It is more eerie than our lack of balancing concerns. After 11 months, we cannot condemn a week-and-half’s operation which was planned and executed by a well-oiled machinery which inverts in a blitz so many months of strife because we never condemned the happenings of earlier months? Apart from the reaction that the ground of those setbacks were laid by you through years of wrong-rule I would draw an analogy: isn’t it similar to stating that we cannot condemn the Gujarat 2002 pogroms because we are not condemning many Islamist killings of Hindus in many riots in the same breath? You know why we, along with you, are so hyper about Modi’s deeds: because it was performed by the powerful in a way the powerful only can do using or suspending machineries of power. Same here. The scale of things in past few weeks are not similar to things preceding. One can condemn it without taking the other side.
It is the rhetoric and reasoning which follow the events, which says that all critical voices lack ethical rights to articulate. Its eerie, it worries a lot. You, dear CM, said that you paid them back their coin. Granted: they, the scum of the earth, paid you with murder and rape and plunder and eviction…your party paid them back with the same coins? Dear CM, sir…aren’t you justifying use of murder and rape as means of retribution? Were your comrades engaging in fisticuffs and street-scuffles? Don’t you understand that your party have failed to deal with the problem politically and has dealt with it power-fully?
It is this payback-speak which worries. Anti-socials, Maoists, hooligans…they function in this manner. But a party with Karl Marx’s name within it with a collateral government? Either your buckling in to these means of solving problems or your using them to settle scores…it worries. May I add that “it worries” is a ridiculous understatement?
Therefore, as a concerned citizen, I needed a platform centered around an event to participate in, expressing anguish and anger. Anguish and Anger. Not pacifist paeans which are sanitized of accusations, like your rally today. Because it is false and hollow and lies. I needed to accuse, needed to say that we have had enough! Then where do I walk? In a rally where the participant next to me might be, in a worst case, a perpetrator of violence in Nandigram or a someone who celebrated with glee during the payback?
Or in a rally which at least hints to a possibility that an alternative left forum might be possible? I am not saying an alternative left political party dear CM sir…I am talking about a platform and a forum, from where one of the tasks of a citizen is possible: critical engagement with the contemporary. Might be, the rally hinted towards it. It is still not formed. It will be in a flux with fast-changing constituents with shifting surfaces. But we need it! Media of all kinds, civil society bodies, artists’ and intellectual conglomerations: all are divided between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I am feeling suffocated in this binary situation!
In the realm of art, in cinema to be particular with which I am more engaged…was talking with a close friend how in India either the State or the Market are the only platforms and patrons; now we are feeling that both are detrimental to art. The ‘third one’ was never formed here (also talked that dramatic arts in Bengal probably has been able to find that niche and concluded that cinema is a whorish medium after all blessed by few geniuses).
A politics driven towards State-power. A politics driven by the Market-forces. We need a platform for a Third Politics (to borrow languages in want of one: a platform for end-users of politics) which your party can never provide us.
Us and Them
And after all we’re only ordinary men
Me, and you
God only knows it’s not what we would choose to do
Forward he cried from the rear
and the front rank died
And the General sat, as the lines on the map
moved from side to side
Black and Blue
And who knows which is which and who is who
Up and Down
And in the end it’s only round and round and round
Haven’t you heard it’s a battle of words
the poster bearer cried
Listen son, said the man with the gun
There’s room for you inside
I mean, they’re not gonna kill ya, so if you give ‘em a quick short,
Sharp, shock, they won’t do it again. Dig it? I mean he get off
Lightly, ‘coz I would’ve given him a thrashing – I only hit him once!
It was only a difference of opinion, but really…I mean good manners
Don’t cost nothing do they, eh?
Down and Out
It can’t be helped but there’s a lot of it about
With, without
And who’ll deny that’s what the fightings all about?
…
Pink Floyd, of course
I have commented earlier on this site. With regard to one post I even wrote that I would have loved to write what you have written. I found your stand on Rizwanur very praiseworthy. But when it comes to Nandigram it appears that either I am stupid or you are somehow being stupid. Either I am mad and insane or you have gone mad and insane.
If I am being stupid I would really like to change my views and educate myself because I have no predetermined political axe to grind although I am definitely political, I am not a card holding member of any party, there is no compulsion on me or pressure on me from anybody to hold any particular view so there is no need for me to hold on to any particular viewpoint in a dogmatic way.
I do not lose anything by condemning the people who indulge in violence, kill people, burn houses, rape women, evict people from their homes and convert them into refugees.
Hence, I have had no problem in condemning all, I repeat ALL, who indulge in violence or carry out any of the above activities.
In my posts if I have condemned or criticized Siddhartha Ray I have also admitted in very clear and unambiguous terms that killings by CPI(M) are also equally condemnable.
Since a person’s viewpoints must be judged by what he actually does in practice I think my blog posts are my practice and if you judge me by those posts then I think I can claim that I condemn inhuman acts by ALL irrespective of their party color.
For example, I have said in clear terms that I cannot support Maoists because of their belief in violence although at the same time I have mentioned in equally clear terms that if anybody in India is really and honestly fighting for the rights of the poor then it is the Maoists. But I do not agree with their belief in violence.
I have in my blogs practiced self-criticism to admit that ALL killings by CPI(M) are as condemnable as the killings by say Siddhartha Ray’s Congress.
The point I am trying to make is that at least based on my practice you cannot prove that I am one-sided – I see violence by one party but I do not see violence by other parties, I see inhuman acts done by one party but not by other parties – I don’t think you can find even one single passage in whatever I have written in my posts which shows that I see only one side but I do not see the other side – that I blindly accept any one view point but do not consider or discuss the counter viewpoint – I may agree with one side and disagree with the other side but you cannot prove that I am blind to the other side or that I do not even consider the other side or even the possibility of the other side.
It is in these circumstances and with this background, that I find that when it comes to Nandigram either I am being stupid or you are being stupid but both cannot be stupid and I am publicly declaring here for whatever such declaration is worth that if you can show me that in Nandigram there is only one side and not two sides then I will publicly eat humble pie. I will publicly admit I am being stupid and that I have been stupid. So I am requesting you – I am not debating with you or refuting you or quarrelling with you because I have no reason to do so – you are not “them” to our “us” – you are not an enemy that I am fighting or I am forced to fight because you have harmed me in some way – so there is absolutely no reason why I have to disagree with you simply because it is not possible for me to agree with you – there are no fundamental structural conditions which makes it impossible for us to agree. What I mean is it is not as if the contradiction between you and me is an antagonistic contradiction like the contradiction between employers and workers or between the feudal landlord and his serf and so on. There is no fundamental class contradiction between us that makes it or would make it impossible for both of us to see eye to eye.
In these circumstances please explain to me why you can only see atrocities by CPI(M) but see no atrocities by the other side BUPC? Why the eviction of 900 families (more than 2000 people) by force, by the use of violence and their continued existence as refugees for 10 months is not worth a rally on the streets of Kolkata by enlightened citizens but when these same families try to regain their homes it is worth condemnation and a rally by these enlightened citizens? Why use of guns and arms by BUPC to keep an entire area covering a couple of administrative blocks is not condemnable but any use of arms to counter their use of arms is condemnable?
So I must be stupid because at every turn I am seeing the ghost of BUPC and all that they are doing together with what the CPI(M) is doing but you and these enlightened citizens of Kolkata and the media cannot see the BUPC but can only see the CPI(M). Why is it that the BUPC and their activities and atrocities committed by them are visible to me but not to you and these enlightened citizens of Kolkata? Why the 2000 people forcibly evicted from home and hearth is visible to me but not visible to you and the circa 60,000 enlightened citizens of Kolkata? Why you, these 60,000 enlightened citizens and the media can see the “new” refugees who became “refugees” in the last 10 days but cannot and could not see the “old” refugees who have been refugees for the last 10 months? Why you, these 60000 enlightened Kolkata citizens and the media cannot see “us” and “them” meaning the BUPC and its supporters on the one hand and the CPI(M)and its supporters on the other hand but only see one great “oneness” where there exists no “us” and “them” – that is why you, these 60,000 enlightened citizens and the media can see only one side but not the other side – you can see only “we” but not “us” and “them”?
The only way there can be no us and them is if there does not exist two sides. So how come I can see two sides – BUPC and CPI(M) while you can only see on side? Why is it that I can see not only the BUPC indulging in violence, killing, raping, evicting people from their homes, burning houses but also the CPI(M) doing the same things but you can see only the CPI(M) doing all this killing, raping, burning houses, “genocide” but cannot see the BUPC doing anything? How is it that I can see two sides but you can see only one side? How is it that I can see “us” and “them” but you can see only “we” to demand that somehow seeing these two sides this “us” and”them” is condemnable and wrong and proves arrogance etc etc? How am I being arrogant because I can see two sides and there is no arrogance on your part to see only side and completely deny the existence of the side? How is it that there is no arrogance in completely ignoring the plight of 900 families and 2000 refugees including women and children and completely denying their existence but there is arrogance when these refugees struggle to regain their homes? Why is it arrogant for refugees to demand a return of their homes and hearth but there is absolutely no arrogance in forcibly evicting people and making them refugees?
Am I going mad and insane that I can always see two sides while you, the 60,000 enlightened citizens and the media can only see one side? Please help me!
“I am facing many questions which I should answer. First, where were my pangs of conscience when your party workers were hounded in Nandigram for months? I would answer in the same vein of my earlier posts. I lost faith. I lost conviction that you and your voices are telling the truth (I never believe your chief adversaries).”
Indeed.
I am not as emotional or passionate as you are. In any case, most of my emotions – what is left of them – are centered upon animals and people related to their welfare in some way. I have tried to explore my own reactions which appear to be pro-leftist even though they were not intended to be (i am pro-left tho). The loss of faith is such that even when i try to take a balanced view of the situation, my views appear biased on the left side of things.
I think this is a follow up of the same kind that condemned Gyanwant because he is the police. It has come to pass that in areas that are dominated by the Party, you are not expected or permitted to have a different Political identity. Whatever may be your inclinations, you simply must show your loyalty to the Red flag. for people like me who cannot shake off their deep seated allegiance to the Communist Ideal and the CPI (M) as a Political entity, it is all the more difficult to digest the arrogance that has become part of the identity of a Party member – at least at the lower level. The loss of faith in the police and the loss of faith in the Party – they are both a result of long standing grievance against this arrogance of authority. Whenever I am forced to deal with the local police or the local political leader, i am both appalled at their behaviour and scared for some days at having seen the real face of the society that the non-intellectual man on the street has to live with every day and night.