[Reader-list] Farewell to our Humid Weimar

[prakash ray]

On 7/15/08, prakash ray <pkray11 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Shuddha,
>
> Nice to see your studied response. I retract from the argument that whoever
> is criticizing the CPI (M) cannot be on the Left. Your point regarding this
> is well taken. However, you would also agree that one can legitimately use
> the Left in mainstream Indian politics to mean the CPI (M) and other Left
> Parties (CPI, RSP, Forward Bloc).
>
> Your criticism of the Left Parties is both factually incorrect and
> politically untenable.
>
> The Left Parties have not based their criticisms of the nuclear deal on the
> grounds of furthering Indian nuclear weaponisation. Rather they have always
> emphasised on the subversion of India's independent foreign policy, which
> have already been borne out through the two votes against Iran by India at
> the IAEA Board of Governors even before the Hyde Act was passed in the US
> Congress. Today when the US and Israel are threatening to attack Iran, the
> critique of the Left Parties look so pertinent.
>
> It is true that the Left Parties are also opposed to the infringement on
> India's strategic autonomy - but that is not because they support nuclear
> weaponisation but because they are for universal nuclear disarmament.
> Confused persons want India to sign the NPT and CTBT, which will permanently
> legitimise the nuclear haves status of the P5 (US, Russia, UK, France and
> China) and nuclear have nots status for the rest. That'll be the end of the
> struggle for universal disarmament. The Left Parties have consistently
> opposed signing of NPT and CTBT while the BJP had secretly agreed to sign
> CTBT during the clandestine talks between Jaswant Singh and Tallbot as
> revealed in Tallbot's book. How come your position, which you claim to be
> opposed to the Left's "nationalist" position, dovetails with the position of
> the "ultra-nationalist" and communal-fascist BJP?
>
> I'm attaching a booklet which gives the Left Parties position on the
> nuclear deal in some detail. Also see the two links below for a rejoinder to
> an EPW Editorial written by my old friend from JNU Prasenjit from CPI (M)
> Research Unit responding to similar criticism which you have made of the
> Left Parties: http://www.pragoti.org/node/251
>
> You can also see Com. Sitaram's speech in the Rajya Sabha on the nuclear
> deal which criticises Manmohan Singh for abandoning the Rajiv Gandhi action
> plan on disarmament in pursuing the Indo-US Nuclear Deal:
> http://www.pragoti.org/node/405
>
> You are welcome to criticise the CPI (M) and the Left. But do it on the
> basis of facts and reason, not malice and prejudice. They have shown on the
> nuclear deal that they have the intellectual resources to match the ruling
> classes. At least try to respect that.
>
> Regards,
>
> Prakash
>
>
> Prakash
>
>  On 7/13/08, Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Prakash,
>>
>>
>> Thank you for your mail.
>>
>>
>> I fail to realize how an argument against the myopia of the CPI(M) and the
>> CPI  have to be automatically read as 'anti-left' arguments. The only reason
>> why anyone gives credence to the idea that the CPI or the CPI(M) represent
>> in any way, the 'Left',  is because, well, they say so themselves. It is not
>> unlike the BJP declaring that it's ideology is 'Gandhian Socialism' (which
>> it says it is). I have no quarrel with these acts of self naming (however
>> delusionary they may be, provided that those who name themselves thus do not
>> arrogate to themselves the right to control the naming of all others). If
>> the CPI(M) thinks that it is the Left, it is welcome to that assumption, but
>> I cannot understand how this gives CPI(M) activists and sympathizers the
>> right to decide that any criticism of the CPI(M) and/or its allies
>> automatically amounts to a criticism of the Left. Actually, it amounts to
>> nothing other than a criticism of the CPI(M) and/or its allies. The Left is
>> not a term that can either be invoked or and exhausted by the CPI(M)'s
>> episodic lapses.
>>
>>
>> I have said this before. I consider myself to be on the left, and I have
>> never for a moment doubted that whenever, either the kind of thinking that I
>> represent, or the kind of thinking that anyone else on the left represents
>> is in error, it should be criticised. That act of criticism is not, and
>> should not be vulgarized as 'anti-left' thinking merely because it happens
>> to be directed at organizations, individuals or entities that describe
>> themselves as being on the 'left'. If you criticise me, I can fault you on
>> many grounds that have to do with either the intent or manner of your
>> criticism, but to criticise your criticism of my thoughts on the grounds of
>> 'Anti-Leftism' would be just as absurd as your attempt to debunk my
>> criticism of the CPI(M) on the grounds of 'Anti-Leftism'. I hope I have made
>> myself clear. Please be sharper and more coherent when you are being
>> critical. It will improve the grounds of our debate.
>>
>>
>> I do not recognize or understand who is being pointed towards in the
>> description "some of us who consider ourselves 'liberated', since we write,
>> read or lecture, and we only do that'. Who is this 'us'. I have to do many
>> things other than write, read and lecture, and I do wish I had a handsome
>> salary. Can you (Prakash) arrange one for me. Even if that were to be the
>> case, the criticism of an argument on the basis of the salary of the bearer,
>> or professional pre-occupations of the protagonist of an argument is
>> actually not an argument. I could criticise several well known activists of
>> the CPI(M) on the basis of their salaries, or of the fact that they are part
>> of the academic establishment, or on the choice of their after dinner
>> pre-occupations,  or their good or bad taste in Whisky, but I abstain from
>> doing so, because I think that bringing such things into an argument about
>> political choices is not only in bad taste (which it is) but is also totally
>> irrelevant.
>>
>>
>> I do not see a rigorous position against a nuclear military policy on the
>> part of the Government of India as the mouthing of a "anti- everything
>> nuclear sacredness". it is not anti-everything, it is simply, anti-nuclear
>> weapons. Since when are nuclear weapons - "everything"? Or, are they
>> "everything" these days in the CPI(M)? And what is "sacred" in questioning a
>> nuclear weapons policy?It seems, on the contrary, to me, that a deliberate
>> reticence about the desirability of a nuclear weapons programme that the
>> CPI(M) and several others so called 'Left' such as the CPI are currently
>> exhibiting, (while blustering about 'strategic autonomy' ) is more
>> symptomatic of their anxiety that the sacredness of a nuclear weapons policy
>> remain pristine and untouched, than it is of anything else. I really wonder
>> who can be correctly described as being 'holier than thou' here. Or am I
>> really missing something? is it just that the that the nuclear policy
>> automatically becomes sacrosant, the very moment when the gentlemen and
>> ladies on the so called 'Left' rush to protect our nuclear assets and
>> associated sacred secrets from the International Atomic Energy Agency ?
>>
>>
>> I have never, at any point, said that I support the Indo-US nuclear deal.
>> I have infact been writing about the Indo-US nuclear deal for the past
>> several months on this list, and there has not been a single posting where I
>> have ever said that such a deal should be signed, or that I support the
>> signing of such a deal. I have only maintained that the grounds on which the
>> CPI(M) and the CPI are attacking the deal are hollow, since they are based
>> on the argument of 'strategic autonomy' which can only translate as a
>> continuing commitment to a pro 'Nuclear Weapons' policy vis a vis India.
>> This means that the presence of these very Left leaders in demonstrations
>> against the Nuclear Tests that were part of Pokrhan II were exercises in
>> hypocrisy and subterfuge. There is no doubt at all in my mind that at this
>> moment, there is a perfect synchronicity between the positions of the BJP
>> and the CPI(M) on this issue. If the CPI(M) had urged the UPA government to
>> sign the NPT and the CTBT and to give up the obscenity of the Indian nuclear
>> weapons programme, or even opposed it militantly, I would have been able to
>> see the difference between the BJP and the CPI(M) positions on this matter.
>> Since this is not the case, I fail to see where the difference lies.
>>
>>
>> I find it pathetic when those who have the audacity to call themselves
>> Communist should support a nation-state's right to posess and deploy nuclear
>> weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. It is in fact a measure of
>> the idiocy and sad state of political bankruptcy of these so called
>> Communist parties. They, and their cadres, and their time serving
>> sympathizers have forgotten, or they have chosen to ignore that the
>> difference between Communists and Social Democracy lay in its origin,
>> precisely on the matter of supporting or opposing the belligerence of nation
>> states during and in the wake of the first world war. By voting to protect
>> the Indian nation state's nuclear arsenal, (even if this is done in the name
>> of opposing US Imperialism) the CPI(M) and the CPI and their client parties
>> in the Indian parliament have behaved in a manner identical to those Social
>> Democrats, who during the first world war, voted in favour of 'War Credits'
>> to their respective bourgeouise governments (in the name of opposing French,
>> or German, or Czarist Russian, or British Imperialism). They have, by
>> placing their nation state over and above the class interests of the
>> labouring people of the world, crossed over to the camp of the enemy. They
>> have become, in other words, parties of reaction. And it should come as no
>> surprise to anyone that they will vote in co-ordination with the far right.
>> This is only a sign of things to come.
>>
>>
>> Patriotism, is and remains, the last refuge of scoundrels, everywhere.
>>
>>
>> regards.
>>
>>
>> Shuddha
>>
>>

-- 
Prakash K Ray
225, Sutlej, JNU, New Delhi-110067.
cinemela.blogspot.com
(0) 9873313315