What Binayak Said? An Excerpt [Dr. Binayak Sen was recently in Mumbai on his first visit to the city after his much celebrated release on bail on the order of the Supreme Court of India after over two years of incarceration in the Raipur jail under the Chhattisgarh Public Security Act 2005. He took time off to talk to the friends and activists who had campaigned for his release. Did not address any public event though.]
Long Live Braindeadism!? On a more serious note, here are two distinct elements One, the “political” understanding/estimation/assessment of “violence” and its impact/outcome. Second the “mandate” of human/democratic rights movements/groups. Let’s take the second point first. “Democratic rights” movement, by its very definition acknowledges and upholds the “legitimacy” of the “ideals” and “norms” of “democracy”. Fights against any departure from and transgressions of such. The “state” having monopolised the “legitimate” use of “violence” has an inherent tendency to curb and crush the voices and actual acts of “dissent”. While the right to “dissent” - and “dissent” in public – is the very lifeblood of “democracy” and sets it apart from all sorts of autocratic authoritarianism – under whatever banner. So the “state”, historically, emerges as by far the principal violator of “democratic” rights and ideals. Consequently, the democratic rights movement trains its guns mainly on the “state”. (As Binayak has very much done here.) But the basket of “democratic rights” in a (proclaimed) “democracy” does not, repeat not, include the right to resort to proactive, planned, organised, armed “violence” as contrasted from (spontaneous/sporadic) defensive (and thereby limited) violence. So the “democratic rights” movement loses its own legitimacy, and thereby efficacy, if it does not categorically distance itself from such “violence”. Its fight against the state loses its teeth as its fights for “democracy”, in popular eyes, clearly shows up as fake. It gets effectively branded as the facade of such non-state violators of and, in fact proclaimed, enemies to “democracy”. Binayak presenting himself as a human rights activist has no option but to operate within that framework. So is the case of any other serious democratic rights activist. The political assessment of “violence” is of course a far more tricky terrain, except of course for the “believers”. History does not provide an easy answer. Unless of course one “sees” only what one “believes” in. Quite an illustrative example is like this. (There is an excellent documentary film on the failed coup of 2002 April in Venezuela, ‘Revolution Will Not Be Televised’.) When Chavez is kidnapped by the reactionary coup leaders, despite every opportunity having been available, they do not murder him. Given the centrality of the figure of Chavez, never mind the routine babbles on “historical materialism” and all that, that looked the most logical step for the coup leader though. When the coup failed, without any significant bloodshed, and Chavez was back to power, he either did not summarily execute the coup leaders, as per the customary “revolutionary” practice. One may very well call it a “virtuous cycle” as opposed to the usual “vicious” one. Binayak has talked of the need to break the “vicious cycle”. And pointed out how the “violence” of one of the warring parties reinforces the justification of the use of “violence” by the other. (One of the participants nicely explained it in terms of the LTTE in Sri Lanka, how, in its gory brutalities, very much mirrored the Sri Lankan state that it was fighting against.) Sukla On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:36 AM, Sayan wrote: > On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 11:59 PM, Sukla Sen<sukla....@gmail.com> wrote: > > > What about the violence of those opposed to the state? > > > > We deplore all military approaches to alter social situations. There is > no > > legitimate justification for violence except in self-defence. No human > > rights group true to its mandate can approve of planned violence as a > means > > of solving social problems. Such deployment of planned violence by > > organisations against the state ties us to a circle of violence from > which > > it's difficult to emerge. We have certain institutions of democratic > > governance, rights which people have gained over long years of struggle. > All > > are teetering on the brink of collapse. We have to make these > institutions > > work whether it is Parliament, or the devolution of power to gram sabhas. > We > > should draw lessons from our neighbouring countries. If violence is met > with > > violence, these institutions will become defunct. > > > It would be interesting to hear what R has to say about this. > These comments seem proto-Gandhian, almost. > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to greenyouth@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to greenyouth+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
