[Reader-list] Naxalite heroes

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

ear Jesse Knutson,

Thanks for your response.

I found Jyoti Punwani's piece stimulating to read, not because it  
presented Anuradha Ghandy is a hero, but because it reminisced about  
a friend. I think that the concrete solidarity of friendship has a  
more capacious quality than the abstraction of heroism. As Bertholt  
Brecht once said, 'pity the people who need heroes'. I am suspicious  
of people who get called heroes and martyrs and would run a mile,  
especially from 'revolutionary' ones. But Punwani's evocation of the  
'revolutionarily' insignificant details of Anuradha's personal life,  
as a friend, and her affection for her friend, made me take it  
seriously. It is possible to honour a friendship, even if you have  
nothing to do with the people who happen to be the friends in  
question, do not know them personally, and regardless of whether or  
not you agree with their views or choices.

I am not quite sure that the conceptual foundations of a Marxist- 
Leninist-Maoist milieu and a liberal ngo are fundamentally different,  
both assume that the 'people' are some plastic entity, an object  
capable of being acted upon and shaped in the desired,  
'revolutionary' or 'reformist' direction by an elite, (some of whom  
get called 'heroes') either through 'true' education (what is  
'untrue' education?), or that higher power called, 'empowerment'  
ministered to them through the good offices, either of 'professional  
revolutionaries' or of 'trained social workers'. In either case,  
knowledge, consciousness, comes from a notional 'outside' and the  
'people' once they are adequately filled with this knowledge, become  
the 'revolutionary' instruments of history (if they are the objects  
of the 'revolutionary' party's self confessed consciousness raising  
mission) , or the entitled subjects of a mid day meal, or an  
inoculation programme

I am actually quite interested in the example that you invoke of the  
prince Siddharth, later known as the Buddha, because in the parable  
of his transformation -  the encounter of someone who has not  
suffered, with the reality of suffering (poverty, disease, senility,  
death - the four things that the prince encounters on his chariot  
ride) - this encounter - is not considered as something to be mocked  
but to be seen as a generative, productive situation.

The anger and resentment of the poor for being poor does not take  
them (or anyone) outside their condition. But a prince's realization  
that the reality of suffering might have a relationship to his  
clinging to a world where there are princes and paupers does require  
him to make a choice about either being a prince, or not. In this  
specific case, the prince chooses not to remain a prince. This is not  
about constructing a hierarchy between the moral valence of being  
princes and paupers, but about knowing that the state of princehood  
and paupery are both obstacles, to emancipation. In one case, one  
chooses to reject the claims of the world, in the second, one is not  
in a position to reject the claims of the world, because one does not  
have a world to lose.  Proletarians lose their chains by gaining a  
world, princes lose their chains by losing their world.

One might say, that for a proletarian, it is the decision to no  
longer act as a proletarian (as being bereft of estate) or to insist  
that she might have claim on the world is something that one might  
consider to be revolutionary. It is in some way, the mirror (obverse)  
of the princes act. The proletarian has to make a claim on the world  
that the prince must reject.  But for a revolutionary subjectivity to  
arise, both the prince and the proletarian must cease to be  
themselves. It means, that the poor must cease to be, or to identify  
themselves, to others, or to themselves, as 'the poor'. Maoism,  
glorifies the state of the poor as the poor. That is why Maoists and  
Gandhians get along so well. they both love the fact that the poor,  
are, well, poor. And their romanticization of poverty has a slightly  
aesthetic ardour. if the poor were to spend hard earned money on  
mobile phones or decent country liquor, Maoists and Gandhians would  
get their khadi (or striped cotton) knickers into a twist of moral  
indignation. Which is why, for instance, Maoists can claim that the  
worker or proletarian in North America, for instance is no longer a  
revolutionary subject. And that to be properly revolutionary in the  
Maoist sense one must bear at least some working resemblance to third  
world emacietedness. This means having and continuing to love having  
a sad, hard, life. Maoists and Gandhians love to make everyone, and  
themselves suffer. The portrait of Anuradha that Jyoti Punwani offers  
is interesting, because contrary to the standard Maoist script, it  
seems to suggest that Anuradha was not at all interested in  
professing, or advocating the vacancy of suffering. She had made a  
choice to live a certain life, not because it was a hard one,  
(although it may have been a hard one) but because it was necessary  
for her to do so in order to practice her politics. She did not  
moralize to those who did not share her choice.

It is possible, hypothetically, that in other circumstances, a  
particular revolutionary, might decide or come to the realization in  
the course of their political work, that their task lies in the  
necessary elimination (through a precise and economical act of pre- 
meditated violence) of the CEO of a corporation. In order to achieve  
this aim, that individual, might have to live for a long time,  
'undercover' in a highly elite social milieu, waiting for the right  
time, to make the right move. Let us assume that this requires this  
individual to live the life of a high society hostess. Would we then  
say, at some stage, that her decision to live the high life was an  
act of revolutionary sacrifice, and that she would be right in  
looking down, or that others would be justified in vicasiously (on  
her behalf, that is) looking down upon those others who chose not to  
do as she did, and who refused to take upon themselves the contagion  
of living the hard life of moving from a society dinner to a cocktail  
to the races, to another cocktail, waiting for the right moment to  
bring her revolver out of her handbag. I think we might all realize  
that to say such a thing would be absurd, maybe even a little  
pervese. I find it no less absurd when the practical political  
necessity of choosing a certain other kind of  life, as opposed to  
another, no matter who chooses it,  is cast in the mould of 'herosim'.

In my view, a Marxist understanding would lie in rejecting the  
poverty of the poor as a moral ideal or example.  Poverty is not a  
state of grace. From what I remember of Marxism, the emancipation of  
the working class results in the end of workers as workers, not in  
making everyone a worker. This too is a certain kind of taking leave  
of the world a it is. This actually might require a renunciation of  
resentment. I have yet to see a Maoist politics that is capable of  
taking leave of resentment.

  Class struggles may be caused by anger and resentment, but they  
cannot be fought with anger and resentment, because proletarians  
cannot afford to delude themselves that the transformation of  
material conditions and social relations can be achieved by the  
venting of anger against their so called 'betters'. That results in  
the replacement of one group of masters with another, and yesterday's  
bullied become tomorrow's bullies. It doesnt get rid of bullying, or  
of that obstinate thing called class, which is not a collection of  
'bad rich people', but the expression of a social relationship. The  
difference between a Marxist, and a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist  
understanding of practice might, I would suggest, consist in the  
understanding that one comes to the banal, everyday, long haul task  
of revolutionary practice, not with anger, but with patience, tact,  
humour and the understanding that the attempt to get rid of class is  
not the same thing as 'dipping one's hand', as the psycopathic  
beatitiude of Com. Charu Mazumdar once had it, 'in the blood of the  
class enemy'. Mind you, I have nothing against the tactical necessity  
of violence in self defence in situations of class conflict, but to  
celebrate the idea of 'dipping one's hand in the blood of the class  
enemy' as so much of the legacy of Maoism in India, does, is to play  
act in a macabre performance of a slightly sick fetish, not to pursue  
a serious politics. A few dead policemen do not make a revolution.

thanks for the provocation to think aloud about these things

regards,

Shuddha


On 29-Apr-08, at 11:40 AM, Jesse R. Knutson wrote:

>    	
> To respond to Shuddha whose mail is pasted below...Yes all one
> has to agree with is that the only heroes, even
> Naxalite ones, are the rich and that the only palatable mode
> of politics is the asceticism of the nobility.  Punwani's
> piece is nice, especially as it can actually convey something
> partially meaningful
> to its mindless and self-satisfied yuppy audience, but it also
> smacks of age old conservative narrative strategies, like the
> tale of the prince Buddha who could only really renounce the
> world because he knew all its pleasures and privileges.  What
> about another kind of story?..One about poor people who
> receive true education and empowerment in a
> Marxist-Leninist-Maoist milieu (and not in some liberal ngo),
> people who reject instinctively the moralism and liberalism of
> the Indian bourgeoisie whom they regard as cannibals in
> practice.  What about people who turn on their betters
> reversing the violence inflicted on them, teaching the rich
> what it means to suffer and be humiliated...Well that would be
> another story, not of bloated empty complacent 'conviction'
> but of meaningful revolutionary practice, which is what
> Anuradha Ghandy
> actually strove to embody. In solidarity with her, J
>
> ORIGINAL MAIL:
>
> Dear Sanjay,
>
> many thanks for forwarding the tribute to Anuradha Ghandy by
> Jyoti
> Punwani. One does not have to agree with Naxalism of any
> variety to
> be moved by the example of the kind of life that this text
> points to.
> What is important for me in it is that it suggests that the
> strength
> of one's convictions do not have to automatically translate into
> making other people feel guilty about their life choices, or
> about
> patronizing them. The world would be a better and more
> interesting
> place if we had more people like Anuradha Ghandy in our midst.
>
> thanks,
>
> Shuddha
> ---------------------------------------
> Jesse Knutson
> Ph.D. Candidate
> Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University  
> of Chicago
> ---------------------------------------
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Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net