Author: Jay Dubashi
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: February 4, 2003
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/030203-features.html
Indian Communists have suddenly
realised that they have been committing blunder after blunder all these
years. They have at last admitted that they were wrong about Subhash Chandra
Bose, whom they called a running dog imperialists, that they committed
a historic blunder in not allowing Jyoti Basu form a government at the
centre, that they were wrong about the Quit India Movement and also about
Gandhi and Nehru, whom they called all kinds names.
In fact, they seem to have been
wrong about everything that happened in the last 50-60 years. A party that
can be serially wrong about so many things should have its head examined,
if it has one. Actually, what we are seeing is the last remnants the Communist
party. I would be surprised if it lasts another 10 years, maybe 20 at the
most. You cannot be wrong about everything important that has happened
in this country for the last so many years and yet expect people to take
you seriously. What we are seeing are the last days of communism in India,
which itself a historic phenomenon. Indian communists have never understood
India. In fact, there are people among them, like Ashok Mitra in Kolkata,
who argue that there is no such thing as India. They believe or at least
argue that there was no India before the British came here and there will
be no India after they leave.
The British left over fifty years
ago, and India is still here. It is the Communists who will soon disappear,
not India. The trouble with Indian communists is that they are not really
Indian. The book they swear by is foreign, not Indian. Karl Marx died over
a Century ago, but the communists behave as if the poor man were still
alive. They are like a tribe whose head died long ago but whose cadaver
they still worship, hoping against hope that he will come alive one day
and lead them to heaven.
There was a time when Indian communists
did matter, but that was due entirely different reasons. They were big
force in the trade union movement and there were years when workers ate
out of their hands. But after India became free, it was not easy for them
to convince workers that Gandhi and Nehru were their enemies. They called
these leaders lapdogs of the British', but the workers never accepted that.
The trade union movement is not
what it used to be. Liberalisation has knocked big hole in the movement
which the communists have not been able to repair. In fact, for the last
five years, ever since liberalisation began transforming the economy, most
trade unions have been at a loss to know what they should do. Liberalisation
has created a new class that has benefited enormously from it. Consumers
have also benefited from the surpluses that are being created. The trade
unions simply do not know how to tackle this new phenomenon. Although tens
of thousands of workers are being thrown out of jobs, there is little the
communists can do to staunch the assault. This is true not only of this
country, but almost everywhere else. In Britain, trade unions have lost
half their membership. Communists were never very powerful in that country
but there was a time when two Communist MPs sat in the Parliament. Now
there are none. There are a few in France and some in the Communist Fatherland,
Russia. But they are like ancient monuments which you visit occasionally
along with your children. For all practical purposes, Communism is dead
in the West and dying fast in India. Of course, you still have Communists
in China but they are of ersatz variety. They are communists because the
party that rules China is nominally communist. But it is a funny kind of
communist party. The children communist leaders who rule China are big
businessmen and make more money than the Bushes and Rockefellers of USA.
fact, the President of China wants businessmen to be made members of the
communist party. He says that they are legitimate section of the Chinese
society and there is no reason why they should not join the communist party.
The collapse of Soviet Russia completely finished Indian communists. Most
Indians did not know much about the real state of affairs in the Soviet
Union and genuinely believed that the Soviet fatherland was going great
guns. After all, were not milk and bread cheap in Russia? You could also
travel almost free on the Mosocw underground which had more marble than
our own Taj Mahal. Newspapers sold in millions and were almost given away
free. In fact, most things were free including education right up to the
University level, hospitals were free, housing was virtually free and there
were pensions for everybody.
Indian workers and the middle class
really believed that Russia was a paradise, except for Capitalists. They
also believed that Russians lived better than Americans. In America, everything
cost money and jobs were not plentiful. You actually had to work to make
money. In Russia, the state gave you everything even if you didn't work.
Your basic needs were taken care of, and the state really looked after
you.
It turned out that this was all
bunkum. The state was actually broke and could get by only by cooking books.
It had atom bombs and missiles and everything else including tanks and
naval ships but it had no food, which had to be imported. But since it
did not earn dollars, imports were not possible. Only the leaders lived
well in their Dachas; but for the common man, it was living hell. Since
Indian workers do not trust communists anymore, the latter had to find
a new enemy. Instead of fighting Capitalists, Indian communists have now
decided to fight Hindus. They believe that Hindus are the worst enemies
of India, since they are communal. The very fact that Hindus want to call
themselves Hindus, signifies that they are communal in outlook. And since
communists do not believe in God, they also do not believe in Hindus who
worship so many Gods. So Surjit & Co now busy fighting Hindu communalists
with the same energy and force they used to fight Tatas and Birlas. In
the process, they are aligning themselves with Sonia Gandhi, who happens
to be a foreigner. This, they say, does not make any difference, since
they do not believe in this insider-outsider business and Sonia Gandhi
is as good an Indian as, say,Surjit or Sitaram Yechuri. According to them,
Hindus are the biggest enemies of Hindustan, which does not really make
sense, but when did anything the communists said make sense? Ten years
from now, when there will be only couple of hundred communists in India,
they will say that they committed a big blunder when they called Hindus,
'communalists'. This will be blunder No 12 in their long list of blunders
beginning with Gandhi. They will say Hindus are as good nationalists as
Subhash Chandra Bose and they are really sorry that they should have spoken
ill of them.
It matters very little what the
communists say because most Indians will have forgotten all about them
by that time. Who remembers communists in America or even in Russia? They
are museum pieces. And they won't be remembered in India either.
The trouble with communists is that,
like Muslims, they have lost touch with the real world around them. They
lead an incestuous existence and shun contact with the real world. They
go by their book, which has itself become outdated. The trouble with Muslims
is also that they spend too much time in Madarsas and shun the real world.
They too live by the book, forgetting that the word is passing them by.
They get enraged when they come into touch with real world, as the men
who blew up the World Trade center did when they first came to the United
States. They simply could not believe their eyes and blew up the whole
thing. The communists did the same thing or will do the same thing, when
confronted by the real world around them.
The real world is not in Das Kapital
or in the Quran. The real world is around you and changing all the time.
Marx's theories were woven around the Victorian world of the 19th century,
but that world dead and we are now in the 21st Century. Things are very
different now, even in those areas of the economy which Marx dealt with
in his analysis. His analysis may have been relevant at the time but those
times were different. Unfortunately, the communists are unwilling to admit
this.
Why was Jyoti Basu & Co wrong
about Subhash Chandra Bose? Bose certainly was not a running dog of Nazis
and Fascists. Actually, it was Soviet Russia and its dictator, Joseph Stalin,
who had signed pact with Hitler, which the communists over here had praised
to the skies. Bose was fighting for his country, which is not what you
can say about the Commies. It has never been clear to me who the communists
are fighting for now.
Take the present situation. The
market economy has completely changed the equation between labour and capital
all over the world. In India, workers are losing their jobs and many have
committed suicide. But you don't find communists doing anything about it,
apart from appearing on TV shows, which have become the beginning and end
of their anti-liberalisation movement.
Public Sector units are being closed
down, even profitable units. But the communists are sitting on their haunches
or appearing on TV shows. Some sectors like banks and insurance are monopolised
by communists. It should be easy for the communists to shut them down and
upset the government's applecart. Some of their leaders sit in the Parliament,
but they have done nothing. The communists say that they will deal with
all this when they come to power. But they are never going to come to power,
either in this country or anywhere else. The communists have betrayed so
many people in the past that their credibility is low. Nobody trusts them.
The workers certainly don't. The chances of communists coming to power
in this country are infinity to one, which means never. So the argument
that they will deal with their enemies when they come to power is bogus.
The communists should take a long
holiday from their TV shows and sit down and do some thinking about why
they are being disowned on such a massive scale. They need a new Karl Marx
and new Das Kapital. Instead, they are behaving like Groucho Marx and making
big fools of themselves. But what do you expect of people who have been
wrong so often in the past, not once but again and again?