[Reader-list] By R.J. Rummel

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Ms. Durani,

I had put only one question to you, which remains unanswered.

In reply to your post on R.J Rummel (excellent post by the way) I had 
said that I, as a Communist, am fully prepared to atone, grieve and 
mourn for all those who had been (or are being killed) in the name of 
Communism. (Most of whom were communists).I have no hesitation in saying 
that the history of Communism, in which I am implicated as a Communist, 
however marginally, is for the major part, a tragedy. I have tried, and 
am still trying to come to terms with that tragedy.

I asked you if you, in turn, were prepared to atone, grieve, mourn, say 
sorry for all those who had been killed in the name of the Indian 
nation, and in the name of keeping Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian 
Union.

This is a very simple question, and it has two very simple answers, 
either yes, or no. The maybe option does not exist, because either one 
grieves and mourns, or one does not grive and mourn. One doesn't half 
grieve, quarter mourn. Please respond

regards,

Shuddha



Pawan Durani wrote:

> Dear Ms Sengupta ,
> 
> I would quickly go thorogh few questions you have put forward to me.
> 
> 1. You have mentioned that few appeals of terrorists in Kashmir for return
> of Kashmiri Pandits to valley may be sincere . However have you ever read
> anywhere that the same people have ever tried to get the killers of Kashmiri
> pandits to Justice ? What makes you believe that we should believe them
> ,when even now threats are being issued to kashmiri pandits , and the so
> called moderate just express their helplessness.
> 
> 2. The mosque where you went to with your friend in Khankah  was a kali
> temple. Till 1989 we just used to pray by applying vermillion on the wall of
> that temple. Did your friend tell you about that  ?
> 
> 3. You too are one who believe that jagmohan made kashmiri pandits leave the
> valley. What more can an example of a perfect brainwash. Would any sane
> person , unless feeling insecure, leave his home at the call of someone ?
> Would someone leave his home, orchards to live in tent without a penny in
> his pocket just because jagmohan asked him to do so.
> 
> You have no knowledge . You are explaining the reason of my exodus to me .
> You have no idea of how I felt when i was alone in my house with my mother
> and sister with thousands of gun carrying mobs running carzily
> outside.Youhave no idea when my two neigbours includinga 88 year old
> person were killed
> and labelled mukhbirs.
> 
> Thank you for first explaining me how to translate Kashmiri rightly and now
> a bigger thanks for explaining to me why I had to leave Kashmir and had to
> live in exile.
> 
> God Bless
> 
> Pawan Durani
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 9/2/07, Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
> 
>>Dear all, dear Pawan,
>>
>>I totally agree with Pawan Durani that an accounting for the genocidial
>>violence unleashed by the regimes that were in power in the Soviet
>>Union, and the one that continues to be in power in the Peoples Republic
>>of China is necessary.I say this,  as someone who was raised within the
>>Communist tradition, and as someone who has no hesitation in saying that
>>I continue to hope for a stateless, classless global society, free of
>>nations, corporate profit and war, if not in my lifetime, then at least
>>in the lifetime of generations to come. Everyone has their own vision of
>>a better world, I have mine, parts of which or all of which I might
>>share with the visions of others, as they might share theirs with mine,
>>and I do not see any reason to be apologetic for that vision. I say this
>>because I have no shame, or regret in calling myself a Communist. I am
>>not now, nor ever have been a member of any communist party, but just as
>>I hope it is possible for people to consider themselves Hindu even if
>>they were not member of the RSS, or Muslims even if they did not
>>necessarily subscribe to a specific jamaat, or Christians who followed
>>the example of Christ rather than the doctrine of an organized church, I
>>do believe that it is possible to consider oneself a non-party Communist.
>>
>>Communists, more than anyone else, must deal with, account for and take
>>responsibility for the fact that their convictions were perverted and
>>held hostage by ruling formations, cliques and classes that led to some
>>of the most vicious and ruthless dictatorships known to human history.
>>They must account for letting this happen, even when they were
>>themselves the first and most frequent victims of these regimes. Their
>>being victims of Stalin's purges does not excuse them from the
>>responsibility of creating a figure like Stalin in the first place. The
>>totalitarian nightmare of Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, Caesescu's Rumania
>>or Hoxha's Albania are not a legacy that anyone can be proud of. Nor can
>>we be proud of the intrigue and petty authoritarianisms that mark the
>>Trotskyite and Maoist or Marxist Leninist formations that continue to
>>function, after a fashion, in our midst.
>>
>>I say this knowing that the majority of those who perished in Stalin's
>>gulag, were, Communists. When Leon Trotsky ordered soldiers to fire on
>>the striking sailors of the Kronstadt, he was a communist sanctioning
>>the murder of communist militants. The millions who died in Siberia, who
>>went to forced labour camps, were Communists. They went to the firing
>>squad singing the Internationale - a song whose jaunty tune still has
>>the capacity to lift  my spirits on a glum day. And I love to whistle it
>>when it rains.Still, It breaks my heart to hear it sung, because it is a
>>song sung by executioners and by those that thyt executed, but hey, who
>>said the world was a simple place where it all works out in the end?
>>Everything is messy, and each of our histories is part of the mess.
>>
>>All this happenned, in my opinion, because, the nationalist logic of
>>'Socialism in One Country'  and/or a tragic romance with the
>>intoxication of newly won state power perverted the deeply democratic
>>and internationalist elan of the global communist movement beyond
>>imagination. From a movement that actively desired the withering away of
>>the state, it became a political formation that presided over the
>>withering away of society, of everything but the state. This is an
>>object lesson for all revolutionaries and insurgents. Yesterday's
>>fighters for freedom often become tomorrows prison wardens. I know of no
>>exceptions.
>>
>>The logic of Capital is not necessarily a logic of private property.
>>Advanced forms of Capitalism actually abolish private property,
>>concentrating socially produced wealth in giant coroporate abstractions
>>far more efficiently than 'nationalization' by so called socialist
>>regimes can. What happenned in the Soviet Union, China and the erstwhile
>>so called 'Peoples Democracies' was not 'socialism, or communism' but a
>>monstrous amalgam of Capital and the State in the name of saving, yes,
>>the Nation State. That is why there is no contradiction between the
>>hyper capitalism that prevails in China today and the twisted dialectic
>>of Mao Zedong thought. That is why Stalinists adore big dams, nuclear
>>power and nuclear weapons to the extent that they do.
>>
>>Our own so called Communist Parties are no exception. I would like to
>>illustrate this with an example that has current relevance, which has
>>been gestured to even in the link that Pawan Durani has forwarded in one
>>of his recent postings, and which might be of interest to some - I am
>>talking of the current impasse over what is being called the 'nuclear
>>deal' with the United States of America. Having deceived most people in
>>this country, that they were against the Nuclear Weapons programme, they
>>(the mainstream parliamentary left, led by the two so called Communist
>>Parties) have now come around to a public posture of trying to create a
>>protective 'fence' around our own weaponization programme, which is what
>>they mean as 'strategic autonomy' under the banner of national
>>sovereignty. In doing this, they have come full circle, and are now
>>saying more or less exactly what the BJP has been saying all along. They
>>are also in the same ideological boat as the ruling juntas in Islamabad,
>>Tehran and Tel Aviv, which are also committed, overtly and sometimes
>>covertly, to their own 'patriotic' nuclear deterrents.
>>
>>I am not an advocate of the 1-2-3 Treaty that will lock India locked
>>into a military embrace with the United States. I am totally opposed to
>>it, and I think that it will put us all in harm's way. But I think that
>>the only way to oppose it is to insist on de-nuclearization - by arguing
>>for the scrapping of the nuclear weapons fantasies of our ruling elites
>>and by creating a sharp and coherent opposition to the idea of India
>>becoming some sort of super power in Asia. This process (of achieving
>>super power status) will being untold misery on the people who live in
>>this country and in Asia at large. The greedy fantasy of energy security
>>which makes our ruling elites salivate at the thought of sending Indian
>>troops to guard 'indian' interests and assets in central asia is
>>something that sends shivers down my spines. For the sake of all our
>>futures, I hope such dreams are never realized. They will lead us
>>straight towards war, and disaster.
>>
>>But our mainstream parliamentary left is as involved in living out this
>>fantasy as anyone else is. It's argument for 'strategic autonomy' means
>>that it wants to keep India's arsenal of nuclear weapons, wants to
>>strike a patriotic pose, and is willing at a pinch, basically to hand
>>this country back to the right reaction of the BJP - all in the name of
>>proving how nationalist they are. The red in their flags is turning
>>slowly to saffron.
>>
>>The choice that we could be making as a society  is not one of  choosing
>>to strike alliances between an Imperialist United States or a fascist
>>Iran, or an expansionist China. The only choice worth making is that of
>>jettisoning nuclear weapons, demilitarizing South Asia, firstly by
>>finding a solution to Kashmir that is acceptable to the majority of the
>>people who live there, by making peace with our neighbours, and by
>>ending the military occupations of the north eastern territories. It is
>>a sign of the poverty of political imaginations in this country today
>>that these choices are precisely those that the so called 'left' parties
>>are bent on jettisoning but clinging to their new found doctrine of
>>'strategic autonomy', which puts them straight in bed, whether they like
>>it or not, with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
>>
>>It was nationalism that perverted the communist ideal. That made the
>>Soviet Union travel a distance from being the product of a revolution
>>that had abolished the standing army to becoming a power that could only
>>sustain itself with brute military force, and then not at all.
>>
>>From a conviction that held only one thing sacred, and that being that
>>the world should have no walls, it became an ideology that built walls
>>and the barbed wire fences of the gulag. From a form of political
>>culture that privileged the widest liberty, with Rosa Luxemburg stating
>>that freedom of expression is not freedom unless it is for those who are
>>against us - communist parties travelled a long distance - to presiding
>>over the routine suffocation of all dissent with a banal brutality.
>>
>>And for all this, I hold the virus of nationalism, to a large measure
>>responsible. That is why though I have no quarrel with people who use
>>the label socialist, communist, or even anarchist to describe my
>>positions, I will never agree to be called a nationalist. When you put
>>nationalism and socialism together, you get something called National
>>Socialism. And effectively, there is little for me to choose between the
>>National Socialism that prevailed in Germany from 1933 to 1945 and the
>>Socialist Nationalism that prevailed in USSR, for the better part of the
>>twentieth century, and that continues to prevail in China today. The
>>differences that do exist are not of kind, but of degree.
>>
>>I am willing to accept the necessity to conduct a personal atonement for
>>the millions who perished under regimes that called themselves
>>communist.  I personally think that it is the responsibility of anyone
>>who calls himself or herself a communist today to undertake to mourn for
>>all those who were (or are being) killed or displaced or imprisoned or
>>imprisoned in the name of communism, to repent and ask for forgiveness.
>>
>>Because I am a communist,  I hold nothing higher than humanity -
>>ordinary simple humanity - just the worth of human beings as human
>>beings, in all their unpredictable, unscriptable variety. Neither
>>nations, nor parties, nor god, nor gods, nor any ideal or abstraction of
>>progress can be more important than the health and well being of a
>>child, or the freedom to do with our time, our leisure and our labour
>>power as we see fit. I do not want martyrs or heroes, I want to live my
>>life with ordinary people, doing ordinary things. I want no one I love
>>or care for to have to die for the sake of a flag or any abstract idea,
>>because flags and abstractions  cannot feed, clothe or shelter human
>>beings with dignity or liberty for all.
>>
>>This does not mean that we abandon politics, it just means that we work
>>very hard to fashion a politics that does not demand the sacrificial
>>offering of our humanity on a daily, hourly basis. I am willing to
>>engage with anyone, no matter what they believe in, who is sincerely
>>committed to this enterprise. But it does require us all to take a long
>>and hard look at ourselves. I want to know which political ideology,
>>which nation, which religious faith has not, in the history of humanity
>>demanded and received its due in blood. Everyone can claim the status of
>>victims for themselves, and everyone has the blood of others on their
>>hands. And the arithmetic of who has killed more, and who has killed
>>less is far less interesting than the more difficult and demanding task
>>of accounting for the actions of the executioners on your own side.
>>
>>What I want to know is, will those who call themselves nationalists
>>undertake to mourn for all those who have been killed in order that
>>their beloved and sacred nations remain the fictions that they are on
>>the map of the world?
>>
>>For me, the communist idea remains what it was for the Communards of the
>>Paris Commune, for the partisans of the Petersburgh Soviet and for the
>>Workers and Peasant Councils of Republican Spain - that of a world, and
>>a social order where people, not corporations or governments, control
>>the relations they enter into in order to produce the things that make
>>life possible and worth living. A world without armies, states, police
>>forces, intelligence agencies, weapons traders, or factories that
>>pollute the earth or poison peoples bodies. A world without alienated
>>and alienating labour. Where each of us labour according to our
>>capacities and receive the fruits of  our labour according to our
>>neends. Where we begin to move from the shackles of necessity to the
>>emancipation of desire.
>>
>>For this reason, I am willing most of all, to look hard and long at the
>>legacies that I have inherited, and subject them to the sharpest
>>possible critique if they are found poor and wanting in relation to the
>>dream of a just and free world. If this list is a place where we can all
>>begin this process of reflection on the limitations and areas of
>>darkness within all that we profess and have inherited -  whether as
>>liberals, islamists, hindutva-vadis, secularists, nationalists, cynics
>>and sceptics then it will be worth the provocation that Pawan Durani has
>>put before us. I thought I would rise to the bait, and risk making a
>>fool of myself, if necessary. Of course, if we all think that none of us
>>have anything to reflect on or atone for, I, and I hope Pawan, will be
>>sorely disappointed.
>>
>>Your turn Pawan. Tell me what you think is wrong with the fact that the
>>Indian state killed so many thousands of people in Kashmir. Do you think
>>there is anything wrong? Or would you like to pass over these
>>thousands of deaths in silence.
>>
>>I have heard more than the odd person with separatist sentiments in
>>Kashmir make the gesture of apology for the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits,
>>and for the death of Kashmiri pandits, for the destruction of their
>>property. Sometimes the sadness and regret in that apology is a ritual,
>>but often it is not fake. I walked with a friend in Srinagar one night
>>in the vicinity of the Khanqah and mosque of Shah Hamadan, and he
>>pointed out to me a place close by the bank of the river where a shrine
>>once stood, and then we both stood in front of it in silence for a
>>while. And he tried to find words to talk about the strange days of
>>1989. It wasn't easy for him, and I did not make it easy for him, but
>>the conversation did not damage our friendship.
>>
>>He told me what I knew already, about the way Jagmohan, then then
>>governor of Jammu and Kashmir, engineered  the exodus, about the rumours
>>and panic that was spread through the grapevines carefully cultivated by
>>the state, and about the painful slogans in the streets. All this I
>>know, we all know. But he also said, "It was wrong of the state to make
>>them go, It was wrong on the part of those that created the climate of
>>fear (and he meant the separatists, or those within their ranks who had
>>undoubtedly attacked some high profile Kasmiri Pandit individualsr, and
>>it was wrong on their part for them to go and to leave us at the mercy
>>of the state, but it was also wrong on our part that we did so little to
>>make them stay".
>>
>>I want you to think carefully and tell me if you can respect this
>>feeling of loss? I agree that you have every reason for your pain, but
>>what if I said, abandoning those who were your neighbours also gave them
>>no opportunity to heal or at least address your pain. Have you ever
>>considered what it is like to be yourself, when someone who is not you,
>>who is the other, is no longer there to speak to, to be with, to be
>>different from? What is the strange loss we feel when the person we
>>think is our most intense antagonist leaves us alone to be with
>>ourselves? For many Kashmiri's who remain where they have always lived,
>>who did not have places to go to where the Indian army would not hound
>>them, perhaps It comes from a strange and difficult to explain sense of
>>loss at seeing the abandonment of their neighbours home. Perhaps It
>>comes from the unease of knowing that no 'azadi' will ever be complete
>>if it is won at the cost of the exodus of a minority. Sometimes it comes
>>from the memory of a Pandit school master in a village school who
>>suddenly disappeared on that night that you all mention.
>>
>>I always find it interesting to come to that point when someone says
>>that  his or her people have done something wrong. Often it means
>>risking being called a traitor. I think in our times, traitors are
>>saints. Imperfect, flawed, awkward saints, but the only kind that I can
>>light a candle to. So all heretics are my friends. They make it possible
>>for people in the camps of their enemies undertake necessary acts of
>>counter-treason. When two traitors meet from opposite sides, there is
>>the possibility of an encounter very different from the kind that
>>normally gets scripted by the security forces of our beleagured
>>republic. There is the possibility of an unpredictable conversation.
>>This list, over the past few days, has been the setting for some
>>unpredictable conversations, I do not wish them to end.
>>
>>I am a traitor, and many communists will call me one for saying the
>>things that I have said in this post in response to your provocation.
>>But then I think that sometimes, treason is the only honorable thing.
>>
>>However,  I have yet to come across a Indian nationalist ideologue who
>>believes Kashmir to be an indivisible part of India express any regret
>>over the thousands of Kashmiri Muslims who were killed by Indian
>>soldiers or who disappeared in the nineties in Kashmir,  or about the
>>thousands who were tortured or imprisoned, because all this happenned to
>>keep Kashmir's within the map of India. For them, this violence was
>>justified and necessary. Those deaths were necessary.
>>
>>You may meet many communists who will say that the killing of millions
>>in the Soviet Union or in China was justified and necessary. I am not
>>one of them, and there are many others like me. But I am still looking
>>for the Indian nationalist who is willing to say sorry for Kashmir, for
>>Manipur, for Nagaland.
>>
>>Perhaps you could be the one who makes a beginning. Try it out in your
>>head and tell me what it feels like. Reject it if you want, but at least
>>try it out. And tell me what it feels like for a moment to be a little
>>larger than your own corner of the pain that engulfs us all. Please do
>>share your feeling with this list.
>>
>>regards,
>>
>>Shuddha
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Pawan Durani wrote:
>>
>>>With the passing of communism into history as an ideological alternative
>>
>>to
>>
>>>democracy it is time to do some accounting of its human costs.
>>>
>>>http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM
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