All posts by Aditya Nigam

Capitalism, Debates, Media politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Graziano Transmissioni and the Cheer-Leaders of Capital

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CLASS STRUGGLES IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY INDIA

‘The chief executive officer of a Greater Noida-based gear manufacturing company [Graziano Transmissioni India Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of an Italian TNC] was lynched to death inside factory premises on Monday, allegedly by a group of dismissed workers.’

‘“Around 125 dismissed workers armed with iron rods barged into the factory and went on rampage. They broke computers and machinery and smashed windowpanes. When Lalit tried to pacify them, they assaulted him with rods,” board of director Ramesh Jain told Hindustan Times.’ See report here

‘Companies in the area are known to employ contract labour in large numbers, though the law clearly states that such workers can be used only for non-core functions and not on the shop floor.’ says another report.

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They’d never had it so good. Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, the party had gone on. Continue reading Graziano Transmissioni and the Cheer-Leaders of Capital →

Bad ideas, Culture, Politics

Saluting a Lone Survivor: Manash Bhattacharjee

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[This guest post by MANASH BHATTACHARJEE is a tribute to writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. – AN]

Solzhenitsyn writes,
the paper is burning, his writing goes on,
a cruel dawn on a plain of bones.
– Octavio Paz

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) will write no more. He died of heart failure on Monday, the 4th of August, in his home near Moscow. On this occasion, one remembers his 1970 Nobel Prize speech, where Solzhenitsyn had described his terrifying and lonely escape from death and oblivion with poignant candour: Continue reading Saluting a Lone Survivor: Manash Bhattacharjee →

Capitalism, Debates, Government, Left watch, Politics, Scams, Violence/Conflict

The red mongoose in solemn procession: Samkutty Pattomkary

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[This guest post by SAMKUTTY PATTOMKARY responds to the ongoing debate in Kafila on the Chengara issue. -AN]

Reading through the discussions on Chengara in kafila, some thoughts I felt I need to articulate as follows.

It comes out vividly through the Chengara struggle that a large section of people remain alienated from social and political powers in the so-called democratic society of Kerala. Why is it not possible for the ‘class proponents’ to see and engage themselves in working towards solving the issue politically? Continue reading The red mongoose in solemn procession: Samkutty Pattomkary →

Capitalism, Countryside, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Left watch, Media politics

Mediotics, Industrialization and the Angel of History

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[Being a sequel to ‘Singur, Mediotics and an NGO Called Indian Express‘]

“There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment…to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.” Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History.”

These prophetic words were written in 1920 1940, when modernity’s arrogant faith in Progress was still pretty much intact. The rubble-heap of Progress has since piled up like never before. The world is now engaged in battling the effects of modernity that threaten humanity’s very existence. We know, for instance, that global warming or climate change threatens to destroy human civilization itself. Who knows, perhaps, millions of years later, some future civilization might discover its remains submerged under the sea and wonder at the heights of the ‘Progress’ it had achieved. Little might it occur to them that it was Progress itself that took this civilization to the sea.

Continue reading Mediotics, Industrialization and the Angel of History →

Debates, Media politics, Movements, Politics

Singur, Mediotics and an NGO Called Indian Express

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[Note: Television was often referred to as the the idiot-box. For very sound reasons. It produced idiocy on a regular basis. It still does. But in these days, this is no longer the monopoly of the televisual media. Newspapers too are doing pretty much the same. Let us call this specific form of media-generated idiocy, rampant among media persons, mediocy and the phenomenon, mediotics. Those affected by it will then be mediots.]

I know that someone will immediately step in to correct me to say that Indian Express is not an NGO. But if one looks at the completely illiterate use of the term made by the Indian media, then anything that is not ‘governmental’ is ‘non-governmental’ and can, hence, be called an NGO. Except that for the large mass of ignoramuses peopling the media i.e. mediots, this is a safe term to describe an animal that you cannot identify. Continue reading Singur, Mediotics and an NGO Called Indian Express →

Debates, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Qatl ki Raat – Watchout Tomorrow

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Tonight is the Night of the Long Knives – or Qatl ki Raat as they say in Hindustani. Indeed, it is not the night of the long knives of Nazi vintage – for that was carried out by Hitler against his own SA (the Nazi paramilitary organization), in one desperate power struggle. This is our very own CPI-M’s equally desperate power struggle – but directed outwards towards the struggling Dalit families in Chengara. Continue reading Qatl ki Raat – Watchout Tomorrow →

Culture, Debates, Images

सुपरहीरो की उदासी का सबब – अभय कुमार दुबे

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[अभय कुमार दुबे का यह लेख नवभारत टाइम्‍स मे छपा था। यहाँ इसे दीवान लिस्‍ट के सौजन्‍य से पेश किया जा रहा है। उनका यह आलेख अमरीकी पॉपुलर कलचर के कई किरदारो की यकायक गायब होती ‘प्रासंगिकता’ पर नज़र डालता है। इस दिलचस्‍प लेख का एक पहलू वह है जो शीतयुद्धोत्तर अमरीका की बदली हुई राजनीतिक हैसियत के साथ पॉपुलर मानसिकता का एक गहरा रिश्‍ता देखता है। पढ़ते हुए अनायास स्‍लावोज ज़िज़ेक का एक लेख याद आ गया जिसमें वे उस अमरीकी फ़ंतासी (या दुस्‍वप्‍न?) की बात करते हैं जिसमें एक आम अमरीकी हमेशा किन्‍हीं एलियन्‍स या डायनोसॉरों द्वारा आक्रांत होने के रोमांचक ख़ौफ़ में जीता है, और जो 11 सितम्‍बर 2001 को अचानक चरितार्थ होती है। शायद किस्‍सा बैटमैन आदि पर ख़त्‍म नहीं होता।]

फैंटम, जादूगर मैंड्रेक  और फ्लैश गॉर्डन के कारनामों की खुराक पर बचपन गुजारने वाले भारतवासियों की पीढ़ी को मालूम होना चाहिए कि कॉमिक्स के पन्नों से हमारी-आपकी जिंदगी में झांकने वाले सुपर  हीरो किरदारों की दुनिया अचानक बदल गई है। अमानवीय ताकतों से लैस जो चरित्र दुनिया को भीषण किस्म के खलनायकों से बचाने का दम भरते थे, आज अपनी ही उपयोगिता के प्रति संदिग्ध हो गए हैं।

जो लोग फैंटेसी की दुनिया से बाहर नहीं निकलना चाहते उन्हें यह देख कर अफसोस हो सकता है कि  उनका ‘फ्रेंडली नेबर’ स्पाइडरमैन पिछले दिनों रिटायर होते-होते रह गया। अब गौथम सिटी का रक्षक बैटमैन भी बुराई से लड़ने का अपना फर्ज निभाने में खुद को नाकाफी महसूस करने लगा है। इस बात का एहसास पिछले दिनों हमारे देश में सुपरहिट हुई हॉलिवुड की कुछ फिल्मों को देख कर हुआ है।

Continue reading सुपरहीरो की उदासी का सबब – अभय कुमार दुबे →

Capitalism, Government, Left watch, Media politics, Politics, Violence/Conflict

The million mutinee question – Anant Maringanti

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Guest post by ANANT MARINGANTI

How far is Nandigram from Chengara ? If we take media coverage and internet buzz as indicators, they are on two different planets.  The heat generated by Singur and Nandigram was enough to run a chain of mini power plants. All that the families in the Chengara holdout have managed to evoke is a few approving nods from here and there.  Here is a partial inventory of reasons why this might be so.

1) Singur and Nandigram are protests against disposession. The bad guys in the two instances are high profile harbingers of neoliberal globalization. No less. Chengara is about staking a claim to a welfare provision that nobody takes seriously anymore. There are no easily identifiable bad guys here.

Continue reading The million mutinee question – Anant Maringanti →

Excavation, Theory

On Tyranny and the Strauss-Kojeve Correspondences – Prasanta Chakravarty

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On June 7, 2007 the opinion page of The New York Times carried a piece by Jenny Strauss Clay, daughter of Leo Strauss. With a candid fervor, she sought to distance her father’s legacy from the masterminds of the neo-conservative ideologues of the American foreign policy. She tells us that Leo Strauss believed in the intrinsic dignity of the political. He believed in and defended liberal democracy; although he was not blind to its flaws. He was an enemy of any regime that aspired to global domination. He despised unworked utopianism—in our time, Nazism and Communism—which is predicated on the denial of a fundamental and even noble feature of human nature: love of one’s own deepest concerns. And yes, Jenny Strauss reminds us that his greatest passions were to raise rabbits (Flemish Giants) and read Plato with his students.

The nephew of Wassily Kandinsky, Alexandre Kojeve/ Kozhevnikov’s seminars on Hegel from 1933-1939 at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, as is well known, fundamentally influenced much of modern French thought, including that of Merleau-Ponty and Lacan, Bataille and Althusser, Breton and Queneau—all his students at some point. Kojeve’s thought also philosophically encouraged a different breed of social and political thinkers: Raymond Aron in France, Alan Bloom and Francis Fukuyama in the US, to name a select few. Kojeve himself spent the final 25 years of his life as a trade negotiator and civil servant under de Gaulle and helped establish the European Economic Community (now EU) as a model for his universal and homogenous state.

Continue reading On Tyranny and the Strauss-Kojeve Correspondences – Prasanta Chakravarty →

Government, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Horses That Walk Backwards – Samkutty Pattomkary

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Mr. Prakash Karat, how far behind are you and your crew walking?!
asks theatre director SAMKUTTY PATTOMKARY

[As the Chengara struggle reached a new phase, the CPI-M in Kerala organized a Dalit convention in Kochi – 51 years too late says the author. J Devika has posted updates on the struggle in recent days, as also a translation of Sunny Kapicadu’s speech at the historic night-vigil on 7 March 2008, in Kafila earlier.]

In more than 80 years of communist history in Kerala, for the first time, a communist chief minister has declared today (16-8-2008) that the caste system is strongly alive in Kerala! It took 51 years, starting from EMS in 1957, for the communist rulers to understand the caste system in Kerala. Anyway, on this ‘auspicious’ occasion of such a revelation for the Kerala CPM people, let them be reminded of some more facts.

Continue reading Horses That Walk Backwards – Samkutty Pattomkary →

Debates, Government, Politics

Nuclear Deal, ‘National Interest’ and the Indian Left – PK Sundaram

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It is the Indian left’s concurrence, rather than its disagreement, with the idea of a nuclear future (including nuclear weapons) that has made its case weak and inaudible to the larger masses.

Contextualizing the deal

In a charged atmosphere produced by the backers and opponents of the deal both pitching their positions in terms of ‘national interests’, it would be necessary not to lose sight of its broader meanings and implications.

In its essence, the deal is about opening up of the restrictions over nuclear commerce put on India after its 1974 ‘peaceful nuclear tests’. Though initiated and facilitated by the United States, this move will provide India access to international markets in nuclear fuel, material and technology, in accordance to the safeguards and guidelines of the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). While it would imply huge imports from the US, the deal also removes international fetters on nuclear trade with other countries including Russia, China, France and Australia whose corporations would get major business orders from India once the deal comes into effect.

Read the full article here.

Debates, Government, Left watch, Politics

Commissar Karat in October 1917

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In his opening passage of the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx attributed to Hegel (somewhat mistakenly) the idea “that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice” and added sardonically that Hegel forgot to add: “First time as tragedy, second time as farce.” He went on to illustrate his comment thus: “Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851[66] for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire.”

Marx’s point was simple but profound. The tradition of the dead generations, he claimed, weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living: “Just as they [revolutionaries, ‘men’] seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95.”

Continue reading Commissar Karat in October 1917 →

Everyday Life, Government, Metropolis

P.S. Mandawli: Manufacturing Crime and Criminals

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Mandawli is a police station area in East Delhi and covers the area I live in. As such it is the field of my ‘ethnography’. The reader may however put the name of any other police station in Delhi – rather India – and the story, I can bet, will read as true as ever. Let Mandawli then be the name of all the dens of YS Dadwal’s men (YSD being the police commissioner Delhi, who famously claimed yesterday that ‘Even in New York women are not safe…’). PC Dadwal also has the distinction of claiming, against the growing feeling of insecurity among Delhi’s denizens, that crime is actually declining in the city! A Jansatta report yesterday, however, cites many ordinary people as saying that they are more scared of the police than of criminals.

17 July 2008: The Times of India (19 July) and other newspapers reported the death of 18-year old Umesh Kumar ‘who was picked up by the police for questioning’ two days ago and who died soon after returning home at night. The incident was of Swaroop Nagar in outer district, Delhi. Umesh did not live to tell his story but his friend, Atul, ‘who too was picked up by the police said: “The police took us to Ibrahimpur police post and started beating Umesh after which he lost consciousness.” Umesh, from all accounts was not a hardened criminal – just one of those whom the police decides to make into a criminal in the long run. Unfortunately for them, he died.

Continue reading P.S. Mandawli: Manufacturing Crime and Criminals →

Capitalism, Debates, Theory

Political Society and the Fable of Primitive Accumulation

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This is a response to Partha Chatterjee, whose recent essay we had posted for further debate.

Partha’s work has been a central reference point for the work of many of us and his notion of ‘political society’ has provided an unprecedented opening, a possibility – that of thinking the ‘unthinkable’. I would go so far as to say that the enunciation of the idea of ‘political society’ has been one of the most important conceptual interventions of ‘postcolonial’ political theory – that is to say, political (and social theory) produced from/in the postcolonial world; an intervention in theory that for the first time brings in the postcolonial experience into its very heart. I shall even claim that the potential and possibilities of this concept are of far wider applicability than the geographical ‘third world’ and can provide a lens for looking at the so-called first world itself. But on that more later. Continue reading Political Society and the Fable of Primitive Accumulation →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Debates, Politics, Theory

Democracy and Economic Transformation – Partha Chatterjee

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[Political theorist Partha Chatterjee’s work has been the reference point for many contemporary theorizations of politics in India and others parts of the postcolonial world. Chatterjee has recently published an important essay, which we reproduce below. Many friends and colleagues in Kolkata and elsewhere have requested Kafila to provide the forum for this debate, considering the common interest that many of us have in issues raised here. Some reformulations by Chatterjee, especially in the aftermath of Nandigram, call for a more sustained political theoretical reflection. The article also raises issues directly related to questions of rural-to-urban migration that has seen some debate in Kafila lately. – AN]


Economic & Political Weekly
April 19, 2008 [Download PDF]


Democracy and Economic Transformation in India

With the changes in India over the past 25 years, there is now a new dynamic logic that ties the operations of “political society” (comprising the peasantry, artisans and petty producers in the informal sector) with the hegemonic role of the bourgeoisie in “civil society”. This logic is provided by the requirement of reversing the effects of primitive accumulation of capital with activities like anti-poverty programmes. This is a necessary political condition for the continued rapid growth of corporate capital. The state, with its mechanisms of electoral democracy, becomes the field for the political negotiation of demands for the transfer of resources, through fiscal and other means, from the accumulation economy to programmes aimed at providing the livelihood needs of the poor. Electoral democracy makes it unacceptable for the government to leave the marginalised groups without the means of labour and to fend for themselves, since this carries the risk of turning them into the “dangerous classes”.

Partha Chatterjee

The first volume of Subaltern Studies was published in 1982. I was part of the editorial group 25 years ago that launched, Continue reading Democracy and Economic Transformation – Partha Chatterjee →

Capitalism, Debates, Identities, Politics

Flight to Freedom: Travel Through Dalit Villages

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“Do you eat piglets?” he asked as our car moved through the long road from Lucknow, via Barabanki, Faizabad, Akbarpur towards Azamgarh. “We can have roast piglets and whiskey when we end our day’s work” This was our ‘tour sponsor’, Chandra Bhan Prasad, well known now as the maverick intellectual who celebrates capitalism, consumption and globalization and who was the first to advocate a Dalit-Brahmin alliance against the Sudra (OBC) castes. Thus it was to be. We were to spend our first night in the poorvanchal on 4 June 2008, eating and drinking.

When we arrived at his village at about 8 pm, it was dark. All of Uttar Pradesh only has electricity for about seven or eight hours every day. And this was a village. That too, the dakkhin tola (the generic name for the Dalit settlement, given that, by and large, it is supposed to be situated at the southern end of the village). But true to the line that Prasad has been trying to convince us of for sometime now – and which actually occasioned this trip – within minutes, the generator started purring and the place lit up. We were in front of a fairly large pucca building that happens to be Prasad’s family house. The preparations were soon made for the feast that was awaiting us – the cooler was put on and other arrangements were made. Prasad has been at pains to underline to us, over and over again, that over the last twenty years, hunger and humiliation have disappeared from the lives of the Dalits in this area. Not that they are not poor and oppressed any more. But their lives have changed decisively.

Continue reading Flight to Freedom: Travel Through Dalit Villages →

Debates, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Condemnation of Maoist and State violence in Orissa

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[We publish below a statement signed by some concerned citizens and intellectuals, on the Maoist violence in Nayagarh town in Orissa. This statement could also be considered as an invitation to a debate on the larger question on the place of violence in political and social movements. Continue reading Condemnation of Maoist and State violence in Orissa →

Debates, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Three Responses to Prabhat Patnaik – Praful Bidwai, Dilip Simeon, Manash Bhattacharjee

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[As part of the ongoing post-Nandigram debate, we publish below three more responses to Prabhat Patnaik’s earlier attack on non-CPM Left intellectuals. We publish them here for record and general interest and do not necessarily endorse all the comments. – Admin]

[Praful Bidwai’s piece was first published in Mathrubhoomi magazine. It was forwarded to us by way of Manju Menon with the following interesting prefatory comment:

“The West Bengal Coastal Zone Management Authority (WBCZMA) that recommended the change in status of Nayachar from CRZ I to CRZ III so that the chemical hub can be located here has as one of its members Smt Tamalika Panda Seth, the Haldia Municipality Chairperson. She is the wife of CPM MP Laxman Seth (“who was largely held responsible for the spiralling violence in Nandigram.”). She was made member of the
Authority when it was reconstituted in March 2005. She was elected as Chairperson when the CPM retained its power in Haldia in the 2007 civic polls.

The state Cabinet had approved the Nayachar site in its August 17 meeting. After this, it was only a matter of time before it prevailed over the WBCZMA! No amount of ‘scientific data’ can possibly stop the change of status of Nayachar from CRZ I to III.

‘Another case of regulatory capture’?”]

THE LEFT NEEDS RETHINKING, NOT ABJECT APOLOGIA

By Praful Bidwai

Prabhat Patnaik has done what no other intellectual allied to West Bengal’s Left Front has even attempted after Nandigram: namely, try to turn the tables on Left-leaning critics of the CPM by gratuitously attacking them for their ” messianic moralism” and their presumed
“disdain” for “the messy world of politics”.

His agenda goes well beyond defending the CPM or apologising for one of the most shameful episodes in the Indian Left’s history, involving the killing of peasants, devastation of thousands of livelihoods, sexual violence, and gross abuse of state power. It is to declare all criticism of the CPM’s policies and actions illegitimate and
misconceived, however sympathetic or inspired by radical ideas it might be.

The impact of Patnaik’s article will be to prevent rethinking within the CPM, which could produce course correction. Ironically for Patnaik, it will only strengthen the party’s neoliberal orientation and the “cult of development” that neoliberalism spawns, which he
rails against.

Worse, it will harden the West Bengal CPM’s readiness to brutalise peasants and workers (in whose name it speaks) in the interests of the rich and powerful, like the Tatas, Jindals, and the Salim group which is a front for Indonesia’s super-corrupt Suharto family.

Continue reading Three Responses to Prabhat Patnaik – Praful Bidwai, Dilip Simeon, Manash Bhattacharjee →

Debates, Left watch, Politics

Fear of the Unfamiliar: Responding to Patnaik – Partho Sarathi Ray

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[Partho Sarathi Ray writes this response to Prabhat Patnaik. It was first published in Sanhati.]

A spectre is haunting the CPI(M)- the spectre of the People. All the powers of the old Left (or to borrow their term, the “organized Left”) have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Prakash Karat, Prabhat Patnaik and N. Ram, party cadres and state police.

The first step in the process of exorcism is delegitimization. The resistance of the people of Singur and Nandigram has long been attempted to be delegitimized by attributing it to the so-called unholy alliance of the Trinamool Congress, Jamaat and the Maoists. That is familiar terrain, to
brand all opposition as the handiwork of right wing or ultra Left forces, and hence deny it’s political legitimacy. However, what was unfamiliar for the CPI(M) was “so many intellectuals suddenly turn(ing) against the Party with such amazing fury on this issue”. That tens of thousands of common people would accompany these intellectuals, many of them long time fellow-travellers and supporters of the Left Front, out on the streets in a spontaneous show of outrage and protest was something totally unfamiliar to the CPI(M), which has converted “the people” into a fetish. And, Prabhat
Patnaik’s essay seems to have been born out of a fear of this unfamiliar.

Continue reading Fear of the Unfamiliar: Responding to Patnaik – Partho Sarathi Ray →

Bad ideas, Debates, Left watch, Politics

But Prabhat Patnaik is an Honourable Man

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[This is my response to the article by Prabhat Patnaik circulating over on the Net. His original article can be read at the end of this response. We have reproduced it in full. – AN]

This piece could be read as a letter addressed to one of my former, esteemed, ideologue-theoreticians. As young students in the 1970s and 1980s, we often went to listen, starry-eyed, to this soft-spoken theorist expound on what we thought were complex issues of our times and come back mesmerized. Yes, Prof Prabhat Patnaik (PP) was one of our idols. Today he fell and smashed himself. And then something strange happened: the broken pieces rearranged themselves to reveal a frightful other face – the face of comrade stalin.

Since Patnaik has referred to all critics of the CPM as “anti-Left intellectuals”, and has also specifically referred to the letter signed by some of us (including me), I think it would not be wrong to assume that the entire article is also addressed, among thousands of others, to me (though I may be pardoned for assuming that a nacheez like me should even exist on his radar!). Since all those who had signed the statement may have their own responses to PP – and some might not legitimately wish to stoop to the level this once-saintly figure has – I must speak for myself here.

Sometime ago, former West Bengal finance minister and marxist economist Ashok Mitra had written a piece on the happenings in Nandigram. It appeared in Ananda Bazar Patrika and was subsequently translated into English and widely circulated. In that piece, Mitra had suggested “prominent economist and party comrade of the stature of Prabhat Patnaik is hounded” by the party leadership in Alimuddin Street. In a way, we sort of knew it; rather, we hoped it would be true. An intellectual like Prof Patnaik cannot possibly be a cog in the stalinist machine, even though he may have stepped in to sign dubious statements not so long ago. We had assumed that given the political history of stalinist Marxism with intellectuals who were maligned, denigrated, humiliated and finally put before the firing squad, Patnaik had made his ‘existential choice’ a la Georg Lukacs. Lukacs, one of the most brilliant philosophical minds, decided to remain in the ranks (the ‘camp of the people’, in Patnaik’s words) and become the voice of stalinism for decades thereafter. Need we recall the whole list of such people – intellectuals – who were thus repeatedly destroyed? And do we need to tell you that so far only fascism or Nazism has been able to compete with the communist record.

Continue reading But Prabhat Patnaik is an Honourable Man →

Culture, Violence/Conflict

Aswatthamma Lives – Radha R.

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[We are pleased to present this guest piece by Radha R, a poet and artist, who reflects on violence and other matters.]

1985 :
We were standing at the Bakery junction just behind the campus where the better -off amongst the designer students came alone or in select groups to gorge on buns at teatime… Freshly baked and still warm and soft, the baker slit them open swiftly and expertly with an extra sharp long thin knife roughly slapping in a whole 50 grams of yellow butter that dripped down the sides …
Post the curfew there was no one now standing at the junction .In this somewhat upmarket quarter there was little outward sign of that nightmare of violence…

“Do you know how they do it?” He whispered “With knives…”
He made a quick gesture of measurement with his hands… “This long…”
“The pillion rider behind the scooterist slashes open the sides of bystanders on the road who often do not realize as they run as to how badly wounded they are… Till it is too late… The sharp edge of the knife blade is lined with calmpose, you see…To numb”

Continue reading Aswatthamma Lives – Radha R. →