[Reader-list] article on CPM culture

[V Ramaswamy]

Dear Friends

I am copying below an article on CPI(M) culture that appears in today's
Hindustan Times, by Ruchir Joshi.

Best

V Ramaswamy
Calcutta
cuckooscall.blogspot.com

................

Lull salaam

CPI(M) Bengal isn't like BJP Gujarat. Its rule has been far more
exhaustively destructive, writes Ruchir Joshi.


Lull salaam

The other day Prakash Karat came to Calcutta and fired off a salvo in
defence of his beleaguered comrades of the West Bengal CPI(M). Standing next
to the Chief Minister, Karat took a swing at locals critical of his party
and the state government: "Some people, including a section of
intellectuals, said what is happening in Bengal is similar to what is
happening in Gujarat. They have compared Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to Narendra
Modi and described both as fascists." These intellectuals, according to
Karat, "are the enemy of the society and the country."

I'm always hesitant to climb on to any bandwagon, and I've always had a
Grouchovian allergy to all the various clubs of Bengali and Calcutta
intellectuals. But in this instance I find myself running after the crowded
bus marked 'Enemies of the Society'. If there are no seats on this
jam-packed bus, I'm willing to stand, I'm willing to hang out from a door,
risking life and limb like a proper Calcuttan, my fingers curled desperately
around the dhoti, shirt-end or jhola of the nearest securely fastened
buddhijibi. And as I cling on, let me shout out loud and clear so that there
is no room for misunderstanding: the CPI(M) ruling Bengal are fascists.

Okay, no. It's not fair to compare a thinking, erudite, witty man such as
Buddha babu to Modi. Narendra Kasai oversaw the planning and execution of
his 'pogramme'. He most likely gave instructions to his party goons to go
and kill fellow Gujaratis. Buddha babu did no such thing. He never had any
control of his cadres in the first place. He sat there at the centre of the
bhadralok tier of the party from March to November, leafing through his
books of prose and poetry while his goons let loose murder and rape on the
people of Nandigram.

In Gujarat, Modi played a blood-drenched 'one-day game' against his own
people and the whole thing was over in a couple of months. In West Bengal,
the CPI(M) has been playing a Test match of the old, limitless variety. They
have spent the best part of 30 years eroding values, principles, justice,
all solely for the greater glory of the party and its leaders. The Sangh
parivar's modus operandi in Gujarat is quite different from the CPI(M)'s in
Bengal and Calcutta - the organised, cold-blooded, clamp, grip and brutality
of the party boys more closely resembles that of the Shiv Sena in
Maharashtra and Bombay. In fact, you could argue that the Thackeray Thugs
took the model from the CPI(M) across the 80s and early 90s, and that the
Sena then tried to improve upon the original but failed, at least in terms
of repeated election slam-dunks.

For anybody involved in observing and documenting culture in West Bengal,
the writing has been on the wall for as long as about two decades, and quite
unmistakably from December 1992 onwards. The Left Front honeymoon that began
in 1977 was long, unnaturally stretched by the return of Indira Gandhi and
the resurgent fascism of the Congress and their death-bhangra with the
Khalistanis; given ballast by the horror of the communal riots in Gujarat
across the 80s; given flattering contrast by recurring incidents such as the
massacre of working class Muslims by the Provincial Armed Constabulary in
Meerut. But, as the rest of the country burned, as Kashmir became a
suppurating mess, as Bofors cannoned into our consciousness followed by the
after-blast of Mandal followed by the cancerous radiation of Hindutva, what
the CPI(M) was doing in Bengal was quietly following a one-point agenda:
making sure that no other satrap came within sniffing distance of political
power for a generation.

This was managed at a criminally huge cost - to cultures, both traditional
and contemporary; to society, both rural and urban; and to any genuine
braking system of conscience, across the state,  class and communities. It
is not a coincidence that there has come no great cinema out of Bengal since
the CPI(M) took over: there was no money, no space for cinema, forget of
dissent but even of quiet truth-telling of the kind Satyajit Ray strived
for. It is no coincidence that the once vibrant Bangla theatre has
shrivelled; nor that so many rural crafts traditions have died or face
imminent extinction; nor that several rural performative traditions have met
the same or worse fate as the ones in Rajasthan and Gujarat. If an art form
didn't fit with the crude propagandist 'progressive aesthetic' of the Left,
it wasn't going to be supported. If the tradition or innovation was
subversive in any way, it had to be uprooted or starved of water till it
died or mutated. Some of this was conscious, some of it just came from a
cretinous disregard for the fine, fragile weave of memory and grace.

Looking back, a Modi, a Thackeray, an Ayatollah or a Maoist Naxaliban 
couldn't
have done a better job of burning down potentially rich rainforests of
creative endeavour. In the communists' West Bengal of the 80s and 90s, Art,
surreptitiously, became a Class Enemy. This was because real art is about
disagreement, about holding up an accurate (though not necessarily realist)
mirror, about taking risks and, in turn, about enticing people to think
outside the box. The CPI(M) could not afford that. In 1977, the Left Front
inherited a culturally damaged Bengal. Instead of working to resuscitate
that culture, they raped it. It is from this violation that come the
subsequent strippings and rapes of Birati and Bantola, and now of Nandigram.

It all became, as it too often does, about the money that brings power and
about the power that brings money. The people of the state, their
multifarious needs, the principles upon which those needs could be met, all
went out of the equation years ago. The worst elements, the jihadis and
Hindutvats, were quietly coddled: "Within your community, you can do what
you like," they were told, "build revanchist madrasas, fund the VHP, capture
real estate, whatever. Just make sure you support us, vote for us, keep our
coffers lined, we who give you this space, this private playground." And
now, to each side this government throws scraps: to the millionaires they
give the situation that throws up the body of Rizwanur Rahman; to the Muslim
underclass they will now gift a missing person, a Taslima-shaped hole.

In the meantime, we, the enemies of country and society, are expected not to
point out the huge nexus between powerful people in the party and
industrialists. We are expected to give the 'Lal Salaam' to anti-American
rhetoric; we are expected to see Nandigram as a 'natural reaction'; we must
now say that the rioting mobs of November 21, even though manipulated by the
Opposition, had a genuine grievance. Oh, and yes, we have to accept that if
we call both CPI(M) Bengal and BJP Gujarat fascist, we don't really
understand the meaning of fascism.

Ruchir Joshi is a writer and film-maker.