The Serpent We Forgive And Forget
http://www.binayaksen.net/2009/05/the-serpent-we-forgive-and-forget/
>From Tehelka
ENGAGED CIRCLE - civil violence
It is high time civil society owned up to and condemned the violence
inflicted by revolutionary groups
ec The Serpent We Forgive And ForgetAPOORVANAND
Writer & Literary Critic
THE FIRST three phases of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections have passed
peacefully. Not taking into account the Maoist killings of poll
officials and police personnel during elections. Although in Maoist
strongholds, they pressed civilians to boycott elections, the people
chose, instead, to risk their lives and exercise their right to vote.
Most recently, the tribals of Lalgarh in West Bengal defied the Maoist
boycott call and voted. Unable to convince the masses, the Maoists
have resorted to the old strategy of ambushing poll parties and
demolishing public property to mark their presence. Jharkhand,
Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal witnessed
violence by armed groups of Maoists. Interestingly, they have not, in
any statement issued, owned up to these acts.
In West Bengal, men from the CPI(M) cadre were killed for defying the
Maoist diktat ordering them to leave the party. To consolidate their
position in the state they are taking advantage of the anger and
frustration of the people toward the arrogant and violent CPI(M) party
machinery. None of us who have been vocal against the violence of the
CPI(M) in Singur and Nandigram have voiced our opinion on the Maoist
killings. Last year, in Bihar and Jharkhand, members of the CPI(M) and
JD(U) were killed for being in the ‘wrong’ parties. And yet, not one
word of condemnation from us who find every single act of state
violence repugnant! Do we see natural justice taking its rightful
course in the killings of the CPI(M) cadre?
Recently, while addressing a gathering on the Sri Lankan crisis,
Varavara Rao, the public ideologue of the Maoists, tried hard to
justify the violent methods used by the LTTE. Rao has been
consistently justifying the violent attacks by the Maoists in India by
calling them “acts of resistance”. Were the recent killings of the
poll officials also acts of resistance? Resistance against the assault
of parliamentary democracy? When asked, Rao trivialised the killings
of innocent people by revolutionaries, asserting that “these were
matters of details”.
Vote scare-A soldier guards a poll booth in Pirakata, West Bengal,
where Maoists called for an election boycottTo defend Maoist killings,
Rao could have as well used the term ‘collateral damage’, invented by
the Americans to justify the killings of civilians in Iraq and
Afghanistan. He seems to suggest that this is an inevitable price the
masses have to pay when they are passing through a phase of class
struggle. This utter lack of remorse is reminiscent of the tough
Stalinist era, which saw lives disappearing in the maze of the
continuum of revolutions. Going back even further, Lenin was condemned
by Maxim Gorky for encouraging the proletariat violence after the
Bolshevik revolution in Russia. In 1917, he wrote in Novaya Zhizn:
“Lenin, Trotsky, and their companions have already become poisoned
with the filthy venom of power, and this is evidenced by their
shameful attitude toward freedom of speech, the individual, and the
sum total of those rights for the triumph of which democracy
struggled… On this road Lenin and his associates consider it possible
to commit all kinds of crimes, such as the slaughter outside St
Petersburg, the destruction of Moscow, and the abolition of freedom of
speech and the senseless arrests.” He further asks, “Does not Lenin’s
government, as the Romanov government did, seize and drag off to
prison all those who think differently?”
It was the courage and honesty of a true writer which enabled Gorky to
speak in the face of ‘revolution’. We, however, seem to think
differently. We let the crimes committed by revolutionaries pass off.
Last year, when there was a move to issue a statement condemning such
violence, there were efforts to dissuade people from signing it by
asking questions like: “By doing so would we not be equating people’s
violence with state violence?” and “How do we know that these killings
were committed by Maoists and not the state forces themselves to
discredit them?” While the first question involves a theoretical
position, one cannot miss the clever opportunism behind the second
question, which seeks to fudge facts when they are not comfortable.
Fudging facts is not something unique to the bourgeoisie. Some months
ago a leaflet was printed as part of the campaign seeking the release
of Binayak Sen, who is imprisoned for allegedly providing logistical
support to the Maoists. His crime was that as a human rights activist
he helped an ailing, old Maoist leader, Narayan Sanyal. But does Sen
support violent means in the name of the ‘people’? He has
categorically said several times that killings cannot be condoned,
whatever the justification. This statement, explicitly mentioned in
the leaflet, was deleted by one of the campaign members who thought it
an unnecessary detail. That the deletion of this sentence was a
conscious act of political editing was proven when it was justified
with this question: “By writing such sentences, are we not trying to
distance ourselves from certain forms of struggle which could be
violent?” The person responsible for this editing forgot that he was
censoring a fact very crucial to Sen’s case, a fact about Sen’s
political stand. He was, instead, imposing his own political stand on
the campaign and on Sen, who is contesting the false charge by the
State that he subscribes to a violent political ideology.
Incidentally, the Maoists have not thought it necessary to contradict
the false claim by the State that Sen is part of their organisational
structure. Are they relishing this expansion of their zone of
influence?
‘Murder and violence are arguments of despotism. To kill a man can
never mean killing an idea’, wrote Gorky
Whenever there are attempts by civil society or rights’ groups to
question ‘revolutionary violence’, there are counter attempts to abort
them. We have heard arguments like: Is it necessary to give so much
importance to such sporadic acts? By doing so, would we not be
diverting the attention from the regular acts of State violence? Do we
not realise that we would be falling in the trap of the State, which,
through a complicit media is trying to magnify this violence?
Strangely, these arguments have been employed by all apologists of
violence. The State says that cases of violation of human rights are
negligible. The CPI(M) claims its violence was restricted to very
small areas of Nandigram. The RSS and BJP plead that criticism against
them was disproportionate to the 2002 massacre, which was limited to
very small pockets of Gujarat.
We are seeing a dangerous trend of civil society turning a blind eye
to violence inflicted by revolutionary groups. More than 90 years ago,
there were writers like Gorky who, condemning the summary trials and
killings in the name of revolution, pleaded, “Murder and violence are
the arguments of despotism, they are base arguments and they are
powerless, for to violate somebody else’s will or to kill a man can
never mean killing an idea…” One should conclude by repeating the
question he put forth to his countrymen, or perhaps all of us: “The
most dreadful enemy of freedom and justice is our stupidity, our
cruelty, and all the chaos which has been cultivated in our souls by
monarchy’s shameless oppression, by its cynical cruelty. Are we
capable of understanding this?”
WRITER’S EMAIL
[email protected]
>From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 19, Dated May 16, 2009
--
"The resources of the world are for us all to share. Let us affirm our
faith in that common cause" - Dr. Ilina Sen
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