---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sukla Sen <[email protected]> Date: 2010/1/2 Subject: Re: [foil] Vidya Bhushan Rawat on The Tribal Question: Sandwiched between the rhetoric of ideologies (of alien saviours) To: foil-l <[email protected]> Cc: Vidya Bhushan Rawat <[email protected]>
Dear Sayan, To "hear" is your privilege. The fact, as it appears, whereas the Salwa Judum is top to bottom composed of local tribals (never mind whose and, more importantly, what interests it serves and what methods it deploys), the CPI(Maoist) does not have a single tribal in its highest rung, nor any woman. Perhaps not even in the next lower rung. The principal merit of Rawat's article is that it calls the grand bluff of positioning Maoist insurgency as some sort of autonomous movement of the local tribals. Kaushik's deposition cannot but have some merit, which you are apparently alluding to; but even in the earliest days we had Jangal Santhal (Naxalbari) and Gunadhar Murmu (Debra). (Jangal Santhal was one of the three best known names.Samaresh Basu - a well-known Bengali writer once associated with the CPI affiliated literary movement, in the late seventies authored a novel to trace the course of the Naxalbari movement - Mahakaler Rather Ghora (The Chariot Horse of Eternal Time), if my memory serves me right, Jangal Santhal was the tragic hero.) With the withering away of its open urban contingents, getting exclusively confined to mostly adivasi inhabited hinterlands and local insurgents (dalams) enjoying certain degree of autonomy given the compulsion of circumstances, the relative weightage of the tribals in the organisation at various levels must have had considerably risen. But they still figure nowhere at the topmost rungs. If you have anything substantive to the contrary, may please share. Sukla 2010/1/2 Sayan wrote: > On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Sukla Sen <[email protected]> wrote: > > http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=227030553882&id=630152884&ref=nf <http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=227030553882&id=630152884&ref=nf> > > Sandwiched between the rhetoric of ideologies > > > > By Vidya Bhushan Rawat > > > Tribal need political leaders who can stand at > > their own and fight their battle at their own and not look for > > imported messiahs. > > There seems to be at least two problems with Rawat's essay. > > 1) If the criticism against Maoism or Marxism is that they are alien > "imports", the same criticism could also be leveled against liberal > democracy, could it not? After all, the idea of liberal democracy is > straight out of the European Enlightenment tradition. > > 2) I have heard it stated that many Maoist leaders these days are, > actually from the tribal communities, and that this is, in fact, a > significant change from the 1970s Naxalites. > -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB.
