Teri Marx Ki: Didi sees conspiracy at every Left-turn. Not.

The politics of West Bengal (or is it officially Poschim Bangla now?) have always intrigued political commentators in particular, and the nation as a whole. The last decade however was rather boring, because the Left front resorted to cheap publicity stunts, like withdrawing support to the UPA, only to lose the State Elections later on. Now, it seems, the politics of WB (PB) have become interesting once again. Thanks to Mamata Banerjee—the defender of the Bengali people, the bane of the UPA, and conspiracy-terminator par excellence. She, it seems, is never short of controversies and is an incredibly perceptive, and woman of substance (in this case, a healthy diet of machcher jhol and rice; or is she vegetarian now? Then again, name me one Bong worth his/her salt, who is one? And Didi, as we know, is worth quite a bit if, erm, salt—well, enough to spoil the best laid recipes of the UPA, at least).

There is no challenge big enough that Mamata Didi cannot handle (and not make them into trending topics on Twitter). After a shocking revelation that the Left was to blame for the number of crib deaths which plagued state-run hospitals, and that rape victims were in fact a part of a conspiracy to malign her state (those immoral, loose women!), Mamata Didi has left no stone unturned to get the blinkers the rest of the nation has on its eyes. This woman is one the country’s most tenacious, albeit amiable chief ministers, whose seemingly “paranoia” driven, and “knee-jerk” reactions only appear so, because they are portrayed by a media bribed by the Left & the UPA.

And this time, history itself is on her agenda of reformation. Her target, the person after whom a Facebook group, ‘Why the fuck is Karl Marx in every freaking subject?’ is named: the German philosopher, Karl Marx and his partner, Fredrick Engels (the connotations of the term go beyond the academic nature of their, erm, partnership. Hey, the group says so, not me).

Now history, we know, is always constructed in an authorial voice, or the perspective of the “winner”, as many have labelled it. Therefore, claims Derek O’brien, Trinamool MP (and the once host of the best quiz show on TV; see, Mamata has intellectuals in her company; how can she possibly be anti-intellectual?) the decision to remove references to Marx (which is, about two paragraphs spread across three chapters, and roughly worth 10 marks in the exams) was an attempt to “balance history”. And that is indeed an amiable move, considering they now wish to burden children with the tales of Mahatma and Mandela (and Steve Jobs, too, if rumours on Twitter are to be believed). However, considering the whole issue, why Marx should be at the receiving end of this ‘balancing act’, still perplexes most people, as clearly the Soviets lost the Cold War, and China has embraced capitalism (so, if anything, Marx—or more so: the losing side always had him on their side. Even the Left-front was defeated). Such unprecedented political victory, that too by a woman (who does not have a wardrobe full of pink dresses and expensive kanjivarams) has led a class of sceptical commentators (who have made the hash-tag: #arrestmenow a trending topic in India) to question both, Didi’s motives and methods, the former they allege is paranoia, and the latter, fascism.

These sceptics could not be any more further from the truth. And the truth is, Mamata is one of the last remaining practitioners of Marx’s teachings. Yes, you heard that right. Recall the Singur fiasco: she ousted TATA Motors, a capitalistic enterprise, benefitting from the arbitrary and exploitative policies of a neo-liberal economy, and gave away the land to poor farmers. Of course, the fact that 9,000 people were deprived of a guaranteed job is but a minor divot in the credibility of her intentions. But as I always say, it’s the thought—or in this case, the ideological engagement—that matters. And this was actually a critique of the Left’s corruption of core Marxian values. Shame on them!

Now that she got a professor arrested for circulating cartoons of her online, she’s in the public cross-hair. Again (sigh). What she actually meant to do was, to chastise the man (erm, well, by beating him up, and arresting him; nobody’s perfect, you know) for not drawing a real cartoon and using Photoshop instead. She was also miffed at the wrong reference he made to Satyajit Ray’s story. After all, she has great respect of Bengal’s artistic and intellectual tradition (Note: this category does not include Jyoti Basu). Why, she’s contemplating playing Rabindra-sangeet at traffic junctions even! What did the Left do for the intellectual and artistic tradition of Bengal? Nothing! This leaves us with a question, a hypothetical one, of course: would her, erm, passion for Marx be any different had he been born in Bengal, and not Germany? Like I said, one can only speculate on this matter.

And tomorrow, if she decides to ban left-lane driving, it’s only because the new rule may perhaps improve lane-driving in Calcutta altogether. Even her decision to paint Calcutta in Trinamool colours, is based on the scientific notion that these colours happen to have a pleasing effect on the eyes. Nothing ideological in there, now, right?

[This is a work of satire. And I do hope the Trinamool doesn’t understand what the word means and decides to hire me in their propaganda wing. Please don’t arrest me; I merely used the hash-tag to conform to Twitter trends, that’s all! Any resemblance/reference to people living or dead was, of course, intended—for the sake of credibility. And yes, you may think it’s unnecessary to write this little ‘note’, but you’d be surprised at the number of idiots who take satire seriously]

"My Name is Karl, and I am not a Marxist"

Mamata Banerjee is no stranger to controversy. Conspiracy, it seems though, is what really bothers her. Well, personally I have run out of jokes on her conspiracy theories regarding crib deaths, censuring newspapers, and labelling rapes as orchestrated by her detractors. And now she had to go and remove references of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels from the state higher secondary syllabus. And more recently—which is actually a day old—she got a professor arrested for circulating a “malicious, and derogatory” cartoon of her, on the internet.

It was rather hilarious, until the Marx bit. But now, I’ve hit saturation point. I mean, there is a limit to how many times you can tweet about one person on Twitter. And like I said, I was running of jokes. 

I’ve always imagined how life in WB would’ve been like. I mean, apart from my annual trips to my ancestral home, and the two-day stay at Calcutta, I have never really explored the culture there, and nor have I had a chance to understand the politics of the state—at least, in a way I understand it back home, considering the Saffron legacy in Bombay and Maharashtra. Now, however, I am not too sure. I think being a distant commentator (and thus, far away from Mamata’s jurisdiction) is what I would prefer. Heck, I’m trying to contemplate under what section she could charge me (to the utter horror of my dad). The thing is, honestly, I know the politics of the Trinamool are fed by paranoia and paranoia alone; their ideology, so to say, is an anti-ideology—violently negating every belief system, be it political, ethical, cultural or moral.

So, without taking on the Trinamool and Mamata directly (mostly, because I don’t wish to recycle Arnab Goswami’s profound critiques) I think I should give a little thought to the ‘real’ victims of the Didi’s vendetta: Marx and Engels. 

My first tryst was Marx was in the 10^th standard, when I first wished to read Das Kapital, as much as I wanted to read Rousseau, or Jefferson—because back then, history had a way of inspiring the mind of a fifteen year-old, and the idea that I could bask in the ideas of these great men, ideas which inspired revolutions, was just fascinating.

Fast forward four years, when I’ve actually read quite a bit of Marx, well enough to see the naivety and sheer stupidity of Mamata’s move. And I don’t think Mamata’s solely responsible for this—the more widespread outlook on Marx, and Marxism, are often very crass and diluted versions of Marx’s original ideas. For example, almost everyone—every layperson at least—would equate Soviet Communism with Marx. While Marx’s vision of the Revolution did indeed encapsulate the establishment of a communist stage,[i] but he never envisaged a communist state—which is a contradiction in terms.[ii] The later works of Marx are often his more scientific one—that is, his vision of the revolution isn’t merely a utopian one, but a scientific and logical one, which is rooted in the class inequalities and exploitation of the capitalist political-economy.[iii]

The Communist Party of India’s (Marxist) attempts have also been an ideological corruption of several of Marx’s core arguments; the bourgeoisie social location of its top leaders, like Karat, Yechury and their well-rehearsed arguments against the neo-liberal economics, are examples of a few. However, the real issue here is not the CPI(M), but the problem of putting a Marxian ideology (once again, a contradiction in terms, insofar as Marx’s works are concerned)[iv] in the multiparty political scene in India.

I’ve had the privilege of learning under teachers who’ve presented both the strengths and weaknesses of the bulk of Marx’s works, and under them, I’ve had the confidence to engage with (and critique) some of his ideas, which I wouldn’t have, had I not been interested in the philosopher as a naïve 15 year-old. And by removing the reference to Marx (for, they’re exactly that: references to Marx and Engels, in context of the Russian and Industrial Revolution, where they all but mention Marx for a mere paragraph or two) she’s sending out a very wrong, and erroneous message to the to-be intellectual van guard of tomorrow: the fact that someone else gets to choose and thus, to shape what we would learn; the ideology of the state, an ideology of paranoia. I agree with Derek O’brien when he says equal weightage has to be given to Mahatma and Mandela. But is Marx any more, or less, important? I don’t think so. For, as a friend of mine put it, in education, balancing is not synonymous with deletion.   

In one sociology class, we were debating the relevance of Marxian thought, one side of the argument stating that Marx’s works have lost their relevance now that the revolution he predicted never happened, and that even universities abroad don’t study Marx. Then again, on the other hand, modification of Marxian thought, like the new-Leftism of the Frankfurt School,[v] and very recent movements against neo-liberal economics, like ‘Occupy Wall Street’ have showed that the central arguments of Marx’s works will always be relevant, because of their deep engagement with the struggles of humanity. And as long as the debate rages, young people will find one way or another to read up on Marx, and by god, we need educational institutions which can guide students without corrupting the core ideas of an intellectual tradition. 

Marx’s sociology was, in many ways, incomplete. But which theory is otherwise? I think (arguably) his most central idea, that of economic determinism, has been proved wrong by both his critics as well as his successors.[vi] But that only enhances his relevance, not diminishes it. In a country like ours, until we’re able to tackle the most basic, and human issues, the German philosopher would continue to influence as well as intimidate, many like me and my peers. But I cannot see a reason why Didi should be so bothered. I mean, the next step for her would be to ban left-lane driving in Bengal. Then again, to those of you familiar with WB traffic, there is hardly any lane driving, in the first place.

Endnotes

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[i] Marx essentially sees history as dialectic, that is, it moves through stages with different competing interests between social groups; the stages he refers to are: primitive communism, where everyone owned everything; slave mode of production where the slaves had no rights; the feudal mode, where the serfs were tied to their lands; capitalistic mode, where the capitalist owned resources, including the labour of the workers; and, the stage of communism, where the capitalistic economy was dismantled, or overthrown.  

[ii] For the revolution to be successful, Marx predicted, it was necessary that the state, which is an apparatus to favour the capital-owning class, to “wither away”.

[iii] In a capitalistic political-economy, it was in the state’s benefit to favour the capital-owning class as it ensured greater profits for the state. The population, for Marx, was effectively divided into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (haves and have-nots, respectively) and the latter were exploited by the former. Class struggle was thus, the basic premise of the revolution, for Marx.

[iv] For Marx, ideologies or the “superstructure” (e.g. religion, political systems etc.) stemmed from the “base”, viz. the material or the economic sphere, i.e. the relationship of man to the means of production.

[v] By the mid-twentieth century, proponents of Marxian thought were disillusioned with the Soviet state’s practice of ‘corrupted’ Communism, and the blatant capitalistic economies of the West. Thus, a new wave in Marxian thought emerged, of which one of the most well-known is the Frankfurt Institute (1930s to 1960s).

[vi] The Frankfurt School, for example, used the ideas of another sociologist, Max Weber, and argued against the economic reductionism of traditional Marxian thought, saying that ideologies and ideas were equally important as, and not entirely dependent on, the economic sphere of life.

Silence before the storm

Tumbling winds, rumbling skies;
Streaks, electric;
fury in guise of violent poetry.

Halls of marble, the towers of stone,
of subdued elegance, sullen beauty;
poignantly stark, until awakened by the moonlight.

Marching armies- pieces of chess-
played by Machiavellian strategies,
by conniving minds.

Masses, euphoric; a peoples rhetoric;
Chaotic, turbulent-
such runs the course of civilization.

Unsettling hearts, undulating emotions;

Like fluttering wings of humming birds,

nigh unseen to the naked eye.

Desires unlocked, and wishes unchained;

taking flight in turbulent skies...

Naked feet, and naked emotions;

the lovers kiss, passionately warm.

Oblivious, of course, to the chaos around;

United together,
in the silence before the storm.

The night before Holi

The loud speakers blared with Bollywood music. You know, the "hits" and the "chartbuster" type remixes, ones that end up making more money than what the original films do. They were interspersed with some Marathi tracks as well, the very popular ones, and some which were rip-offs of certain Bollywood remixes.  Such musical...extravaganzas are a regular feature in these parts, especially on occasions like elections, Ganesh pandals, birthday parties of some politician's kids- a memorable evening and some good entertainment, I suppose...for some votes in return, of course. As if that's a crime? Not in these parts, at least. 

Tonight's occasion is Holi- the festival of colours. 

For a large portion of my life, Holi was a favourite festival; the community coming together, visiting relatives, colouring their faces, and painfully scrubbing the colours off your skin (and hoping that you wouldn't have to use kerosene, or ghazlet, as they call it here). It was a perfect getaway from the mundane routines of life; to freak out, as one might aptly describe it. 

Obviously, playing with colours was more exciting than the bonfire. Nonetheless, I tried not missing the bonfire. The uncles in the neighbourhood collected dried coconut leaves and branches, and would try to make the pile more aesthetically pleasing; once, they'd even put an effigy of Holika. They were often helped by their kids, who tried juggling duties with a game of tag, and later, cricket. 

The next day was battleground for us: me and a few friends would take on our neighbours' kids in what we called the ''Holi Wars''; we'd prepare our arsenal weeks in advance, and fortify our 'base camp'. Water balloons became grenades and the pichkari a sub-machine gun. People who came out dressed were never spared; I mean, who in their right mind goes out dressed on Holi?

I don't think we ever won; we often got outnumbered four against one. But, that was the closest I got to being John Rambo, with the war paint on face and all.

Today, those kids I played with are some politician’s workforce; they still set up the bonfire with their fathers and uncles, but the political undertones aren't as subtle as they once were; or perhaps, I’m now old enough to understand that. 

We’re not friends now; more so acquaintances- flashing a smile when I meet them on the street, or when they come over with a signature petition for some cause- coexisting peacefully on the same street, and neighbourhood. 
The friend I used to play with became a pain-in-the-neck, obsessed with money, pubs and high-end cell phones; I haven’t heard from the second guy for over seven years. Don’t know if he’s a politician’s right-hand or a tech-geek; though, I’d prefer the latter.

Needless to say, on this particular night I wanted to avoid the noise, and all my old friends. 

I found my self in a different neighbourhood, a quieter one. I haven't been to these parts in ages. A few kids ran past me, spraying water on each other, laughing. They probably had exams the next day, but heck, like that ever stopped kids?

Their fathers and uncles were stacking dried leaves and branches on the bonfire; they could aptly be described as merry and happy. Their mothers and grandmothers, not wanting to miss out any of the fun, were outdoors too. Just the way a community is supposed to be, almost like one of those serials they air on SAB TV.

I couldn't see any political hoardings, however, which were rather conspicuous by their absence. No fancy registration-plates claiming political allegiances either. Just people who value this event, and share it with   each another and their children.

I walked on, thinking, 'how would Prahlad feel about his bonfire being lit by some corrupt politician?' But for a moment there, I forgot that's what his father was, wasn't he? A corrupt demon-king, ultimately slayed by the forces of good?
Holi, as we wrote in essays, symbolized the victory of good over evil, and all sorts of idealistic nonsense. I think it's an excuse for people with power (and lots of money) to throw lavish gatherings...I don't visit my relatives, who'd want to ruin a good holiday? 

Those neighbours still play Holi, or maybe they don't. I haven't noticed really; guess they're all mature now and think it naive to be nostalgic. I'd agree on that. 

Call it a cliche, but times change and so do people, for the better or for worse; that's not for me to decide. They do, occasionally enjoy a game of cricket, albeit with swearing and profane references. 

Maybe, I'm too judgmental on them. Or perhaps, a tad bit cynical. 

Ah, the loud music again- 'Sheila ki jawani' this time; how appropriate. I just hope they keep to the 10 pm deadline. As if I care; I'd probably shut the windows, and watch a movie, get up late in the morning, and laze around a bit more.
I mean, who in their right minds goes out dressed on Holi?