Author: Balbir K Punj
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: September 24, 2004
"Communism, like any other revealed
religion, is largely based on prophecies." - HL Mencken. A group of top
communist ideologues from China visiting Kolkata to study the "Hindu way
of life" in context of the Left movement in India made interesting news.
In the heydays of communism, it was the Indian Leftists who were visiting
Moscow, Beijing or Havana for crash courses in the theory and practice
of communism.
Indeed the prophets of the ideology
have shown little sensitivity towards the religio-cultural sensibilities
of different people. The new creed was, after all, to replace all earlier
faiths. Marx had held "religion is the opium of masses". Lenin had said,
"Marxism is materialism. As such, it is as relentlessly hostile to religion
as was the materialism of the 18th century Encyclopaedists or the materialism
of Feuerbach..." And so: "Down with religion and long live atheism; the
dissemination of atheist views is our chief task!" (The Attitude of the
Workers' Party to Religion, Proletary, 1909). Christianity and Judaism
were proscribed in the erstwhile USSR (but leniency was shown to Muslims
for Lenin wanted to woo Turks and Arabs over to communism). However, during
its most calamitous hour that was World War II, Stalin ordered the reopening
of the closed Orthodox churches to bolster the morale of the Russians.
Sadly, the churches were shut again once the war was over.
"Religion should not only be dismissed,"
said Marx, "but dismissed with scorn." His Marxism was the child of 19th
century Europe, where the hold of religion on society was on the wane.
It was a part of a movement to reinvent a secular identity for Europe,
the political centre of the world, since the 17th century "Age of Reason".
Marxists viewed religion not as a matter of private belief or cultural
identity, but as political challenge. It is because communist thinking
was conditioned by the West European backdrop, which had to liberate itself
from the vice-like grip of Catholic Church. Marx never considered Russia
fit enough for "revolution"; quite like how, three decades later, Lenin
dismissed the Chinese. These countries, Marx reasoned, was too backward
since there was neither capitalism nor industrialisation. He thought communism
would sweep industrially developed countries of Europe via France, Germany,
Belgium or England, which never happened. The "final crisis of capitalism"
never arose there till "final crunch of communism" swept the ideology away
in East Europe.
Similarly, Marxists' views on religion
need to be rethought when applied on societies as diverse as Chile and
Cambodia. In Chile, for example, where Western hemisphere's first Marxist
head of state was chosen through ballot (Salvador Allende in 1971), not
even dyed-in-the-wool communists would dare say they are atheists. Communism
there pertains to economic policies rather than policing people's religious
faith. Legendary Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh was a practicing Buddhist
and proud of it.
Like colonialism or Nazism, the
great era of communism is gone forever. It is a 'God' that failed it, and
its prophets turned out to be wrong if not liars! Clash of civilisations
and not class struggle is going to be the central determinant in our times.
Communism did once sweep across the world from Prague to Pyongyang and
Shanghai to Santiago. But now the fires of jihad have been stoked everywhere
from Beslan to Jakarta, and from New York to Madrid. In fact, the dissolution
of the USSR was itself attended by war in Afghanistan, which had taken
a strident jihadi overtone.
A newspaper has made much of the
figure of 54,000 people in West Bengal (a State of 82 million people) who
do not believe in any religion. I believe they are all overzealous communist
Hindus. In 1981, four years after the communist takeover, the figure was
a meagre 3132. Full communist party workers in West Bengal will be at least
20 times the number of atheist population. So, even after two decades of
godless rule, more than 99 per cent people remain affiliated to an organised
religion including a majority of the communist cadres.
Our top comrades in Bengal who run
down Saraswati Vandana might think their Hindu identity as being incidental,
but it is quite significant. First, the Chinese can more easily relate
to the word "Hindu" than to "Indian". The case is not different the world
over as "Hindu" and "Indian" are almost synonymous. Moreover, comrades
like Mr Jyoti Basu or Mr Pramod Dasgupta (or in fact eight-tenth of West
Bengal communist top brass) fled from Islamic Pakistan and could practice
communism only in a Hindu majority country. It is a remarkable observation
that Muslim countries, like Pakistan or Bangla-desh, even though they are
very poor, have no communist parties or Naxalites.
The Chinese delegation should note
that while Mao treated Uighur Muslims as separatists in China's Zinxiang
(Xini Xua) province with iron fists, Muslim fundamentalists receive kid-glove
treatment in West Bengal. For the first 40 years of the People's Republic
of China, no azaan was permitted from the grand mosque of Beijing. Compare
this with communists in Bengal, who have still not implemented the Calcutta
High Court's 1997 decision banning use of loudspeakers for calling the
faithful to prayers.
The Imam of the Tipu Sultan mosque
in Kolkata declared a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh for anyone who could tar
the face of Taslima Nasreen. A couple of years ago, the Chief Minister
Buddhadev Bhattacharya developed cold feet over his remarks on the proliferation
of madarsas in the border districts of West Bengal, at the sight of a massive
demonstration by Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind. Communism does not believe in democracy
but Indian communists are not in a position to militate against that central
constitutional pillar of Indian politics. In fact, they try to portray
that they alone are democratic whereas the others are fascists. This communist
interface with democracy has proved worse than communist dictatorship.
In a dictatorship, you crush anyone who may challenge the powers-that-be,
irrespective of his religious affiliation. But communism under democratic
dispensation has become a worse perversity for the Muslim vote bank. If
only the Chinese communists had taken notice of this.
The Chinese, who suffer from an
insular "Middle Kingdom" syndrome, have always thought in terms of fortifying
their country. From defeated and scared after the Manchurian war, the Chinese
made their nation a formidable force. They had never been 'the running
dogs' of the other communists anywhere in the world. In the first year
of PRC, Mao sent People's Army to fight in Korea against US-led UN forces.
The People's Army that fought vehemently included his only son, who fell
a victim in the war. But the communists of West Bengal do not send their
children into the Army. Worse, they give away their land by resettling
Bangladeshi infiltrators. In the 1940s, the "Hindu" communists had acted
as the "running dogs of Jinnah" and worked overtime for Pakistan.
A "Hindu" communist referring to
Mao would say, "China's Chairman is, Our Chairman". But did a Chinese ever
say: "Stalin is our President?" China, even though not a nuclear power
then, continued a 300-year-old border dispute over some islands in Amur
and Ussari rivers with Russia. But our communists were glad to gift Teenbigha
back to Bangladesh. Incidentally, some "Hindu" communists welcomed the
Chinese invasion in 1962. So, it will be better if the Chinese communists,
instead of just studying the "Hindu" way of communism, taught them a lesson
or two on the "Chinese" way of communism. The "Hindu" communists, it seems,
are like wolves in lamb's clothings. Mr Basu was never an approximation
of Mao; will Mr Bhattacharya ever be one of Deng?
Deng Xiaoping was prudent in saying:
"It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white; what matters is how well
it catches mice." In the 1980s and '90s, China was opening more industries
and inviting more FDI while the Bengal communists were chasing away both.
Is that the "Hindu" view of communism?"
