‘Arjuna! Arjuna!

The masses are crying out for you.

They need today your mighty Gandiva.

Cast aside your false robes of the impotent Brihannala

And seek your weapon in the Shami tree of rebellion.’¹

 

THESE are the days of a ‘feel-good’ economy and unashamed hedonism. ‘Yuppies’ (some not so young) and industrialists, politicians and bureaucrats, contractors and film stars rub shoulders with fixers and mafia dons, high class pimps and call-girls, in a democratic show of their wealth in glitzy parties. Sometimes they press the wrong button on the elevator of upward mobility – and then they get caught for scams!

But our ministers assure us that their lifestyle is a sign of the glowing health of our economy (e.g. ‘five-star culture… a synonym for excellence’ – Finance Minister Jaswant Singh²) which the new environment of globalization and liberalization has brought about by freeing the industrialists and politicians from the clutches of socialism. If we raise our voice against their dubious means of income, they retort – What’s wrong? This is an expression which is no longer a moral question, but an aggressive affirmation made by the new Indian privileged rich to register their right to make money by hook or by crook (euphemistically described as market economy) and dismiss the rest of the population as an incompetent swinish multitude which cannot compete with them in the new global order.

They declare nonchalantly – Forget the Gandhian and Communist bleeding hearts! Enough of worshipping and glamorizing poverty! Get rid of the image of that ‘half-naked fakir’ who has been symbolizing India all these years. What the hell? We are a 100-200 million strong biradari marching into the world of developed nations, sharing their living standards and consumption patterns. It is we alone, therefore, who have the right to represent India. We are manufacturing new cars and television sets, registering our growth in information technology and mobile phone subscriptions, building exclusive townships and malls for ourselves, and thinning down our establishment costs (by retrenching workers). We are now just waiting to fashion our own mascot to replace that frail human figure whose statues defile the street corners in Indian cities!

Dare we remind the biradari of the other Indians whose plight shocks the rest of the world? The latest UNDP report reveals that India is home to 233 million hungry people and over 40 million children do not go to primary schools. Even our own Census, by carrying out a house-to-house survey in 2000, unfolds the quality of life that the average Indian citizen leads. Only 52 per cent of our people live in houses with permanent walls and roof. A mere 56 per cent have electricity, and over 60 per cent families do not get water at home. Add to this the lack of medical facilities in the rural areas and the steady deterioration in the services rendered by hospitals in major cities – and all these in a situation where epidemics like cholera, malaria and even plague (which has been eradicated in the developed nations) revisit us every year.

 

 

Add again the daily reports of lynching by casteist bigots and massacres by religious fanatics, and we get a total picture of modern India. It makes our country stink in the opinion of civilized people. At best, India evokes pity among the global humanitarian institutions, some among which record the violations of human rights, and some organize more charity from foreign donors to help the Indian poor. At worst, it elicits disdain from the snooty corporate barons of the West who laugh at the desperate efforts of the Indian parvenu to imitate their lifestyle.

How are the other Indians – the 800 million – behaving? The majority remain poor, but they do not want to be left behind in their steady adherence to traditional socio-religious practices, as well as in their new pursuit of modern consumerist values, however expensive both might be. To go back to the Census household survey, we find that during the last decade more places of worship (some 2.4 million) had cropped up than schools and colleges (1.5 million) and hospitals (0.6 million).

 

 

While one can surely blame the state for neglecting its responsibility for providing more educational and medical facilities to the people, one can also ask these people why they choose to contribute their hard-earned money to the building of temples (which include mosques, gurudwaras, churches, as well as dubious institutions run by charlatan babajis and matajis?) instead of schools and hospitals in their localities? Pressures to reinforce conservative socio-religious customs and taboos – some of which are against all humanitarian norms – appear to have mounted up among our common people.

Our newspapers are littered daily with reports of bride-burning and lynching of couples accused of inter-caste marriages or liaisons within the Hindu community; imposition of diktats like the burqua and other restraints on Muslim women followed by punishments like physical attacks on their violation of such diktats; killings of women who are branded as witches by tribal communities. Ironically enough, most of these murderous acts are carried out in rural India with social sanction of the villagers, often under the auspices of panchayats – supposed to have been duly elected by the villagers under our government’s plan of devolution and decentralization of power to the poor.

Community leaders in villages are reinforcing divisions along caste, religious, tribal, linguistic and other divisive lines to such an extent that even parents are motivated to lynch their own children if they marry outside their respective clans – acts that are sanctioned by the community as ‘honour killings’. Needless to say, the victims are mostly women.

The new commercial and consumerist values quite often coexist with these traditional and conservative socio-religious norms within the psyche of a single individual. In most of the states, according to the Census findings, households which lack basic amenities like toilets, spend their money on buying television sets rather than on trying to install toilets in their homes or neighbourhoods. Evidently they prefer to queue for hours before public toilets in urban slums. In rural areas they hide behind bushes to attend to nature’s call, and in some places even walk for miles to bathe in a river or a pond. Yet, there are 26 million television sets in rural India catering to a variety of clientele, ranging from private households of rich and middle farmers to the better-off some among the sharecroppers and artisans.

 

 

Barring the times of elections and cricket matches, they mostly hook on to the channels that offer Bollywood entertainments of dance and song sequences and advertisements of consumer goods like the latest in sartorial designs or perfumes on the one hand, and mythological films which dangle divine miracles before their eyes and religious discourses that advice them to seek solace at the feet of the god-men and god-women on the other. One leading Indian political commentator defends this popular craze for the idiot-box entertainment, and sneeringly dismisses the ‘do-gooder socialist government’s’ past attempts in the 1950s to educate our people in classical music, in the following words: ‘…governments can’t prevent people from having fun… Indians love to have fun…’³

It is exactly this kind of condescending encouragement of the lowest common denominator by a philistine establishment that has led to the widespread proclivity towards the four C’s – consumerism, conservatism, corruption and crime – all in the name of ‘having fun’ – not only among the rich, but also large sections of the poor and underprivileged in India. Crude symbols advertised to appeal to cupidity or bestiality, and propagated to whip up patriotism or prejudices – in short, the deployment and imposition of the baser types of cultural and social norms on a gullible people to turn them into a docile multitude – are all being clothed in the rhetoric of ‘globalization’ and ‘liberalization’. At this rate, India will soon become a country where the moral sense will be dead, the social conscience calloused and the intellectual capacity confused and enfeebled.

 

 

Even a state like West Bengal, which had been ruled for more than twenty-five years by the Left, is no exception. The BJP accuses it of ‘indoctrinating’ the younger generation into Marxist ideas through school textbooks. But there is hardly any trace of Marxism in this generation. On the contrary, whatever little economic prosperity that has been brought about among sections of the rural masses by the Left Front government’s land reforms, is being translated into practices that are shaped by the values of the ‘yuppie-culture’ which have been spawned by official policies that ‘liberalize’ the marriage of old bigotries with new superstitions.

The legally banned practice of dowry is being revived in the shape of demanding – and offering – scooters and television sets, apart from the heavy cash to enable the bridegroom to bribe his way to some job. At the same time, Murali Manohar Joshi can find in Calcutta and other towns of the Marxist-ruled state a wide constituency for himself, where palmists and astrologers are having a field day, what with the educated youth and their parents consulting horoscopes before marriages, and disco-dancing Bengali boys and girls seeking a variety of rings to protect themselves from financial calamities! Togadia will be happy to find RSS shakhas and VHP-run schools in interior villages from where enough Bengali Ram bhakts are being recruited to implement the minority-bashing agenda of the BJP.

 

 

In such a situation, terms like ‘socialism’ – or even a liberal euphemism for a peaceful and humane social order called ‘Gandhism’ – are considered passé by our ruling elite. Stampeded by the juggernaut of globalization, and abandoned by a people who prefer to follow the four C’s, the Leftists find themselves in a state of confusion and helplessness. They wring their hands and bewail like Arjuna in the Maushala-parva (the 17th canto) of Mahabharata. After the death of his friend and charioteer Krishna, and the destruction of the Yadu dynasty, a brokenhearted and disconsolate Arjuna trudged his way to the ashram of Veda Vyasa and bemoaned his failure to protect his people from the invading plunderers who carried away the women:

‘I couldn’t defeat them even though I used my Gandiva. I lost the strength that I had in the past. I forgot in a moment all the divine weapons which I possessed. My armoury lay exhausted, and I couldn’t see any longer the guide who led my chariot – that man who held a conch, a discus, a club and a lotus – who had always scorched my enemies. It was only after this great man had scalded them that I could destroy them with my Gandiva… In his absence today, I feel extremely exhausted and dizzy.’

The charioteer of the Left movement – that grand old philosopher-activist called Karl Marx – seems to be receding into the background, like the disappearing Krishna in Arjuna’s vision. But his words still ring a bell – ironically though, in a rather reverse direction. What he said about the rule of the bourgeoisie in his times has come to haunt the present generation of his followers with the fears about their own beliefs – ‘All that is solid melts into air.’

 

 

The collapse of the socialist system in the Soviet Union has reinforced the fears and misgivings that had disturbed the Left intellectuals for decades – all through the period of Stalinist terror within Russia, the incursions in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and later in Afghanistan. The other ‘socialist’ power, China, which at one time claimed to offer a superior alternative to the Soviet system, has turned out to be no better – what with the madness to which the Cultural Revolution descended and the internecine feuds within the Communist Party – leaving behind a record of brutal suppression of human rights. Under its new leadership today, instead of challenging the capitalist order, it is fast changing into the clothes of capitalism and reducing itself to a ‘paper tiger’ – the very term once used by its Chairman to dismiss US capitalism. Yet another ironical twist to the predictions made by great men!

Rubbing their hands in glee while watching a prostrated and paralyzed Left, the ruling think-tanks in Washington and New Delhi have now begun to write the obituary of socialism. But is it not premature? The past history of the unequal contest between capitalism and socialism has seen ups and downs. Like the phoenix, socialist ideas and movements have the peculiar habit of bouncing back from the ashes of their defeat, to haunt the capitalist order as the ‘spectre’ of the Communist Manifesto.

Capitalism with its built-in constraints cannot fully address the basic problems of inequality and poverty, whether in the developed or developing nations. Its political institutions, although offering democratic space for debate on these problems, remain crippled when trying to solve them. In its original home – the West – the economy is yet to recover from the bust following the financial market boom of the 1990s, and continues to reel under the weight of rising unemployment. To cap it all, a pile of corporate scandals headed by Enron and WorldCom has already besmirched the image of the much-touted ‘new world order of liberalization.’ It has infected the erstwhile socialist countries too, after their adoption of the capitalist free market system, which has ‘liberalized’ the rules for corrupt businessmen and mafia criminal gangs (who have replaced the former party apparatchiks and KGB), and withdrawn the social welfare measures that once helped the common citizens.

 

 

 

While watching these developments that increasingly remind the people of capitalism’s inherent instability and inevitable tendency to create inequality, those Communists who still dream of reviving the old socialist system, rub their hands in glee in an ‘I-told-you-so’ gesture. But you can never make the ghosts of the past walk again. To paraphrase Marx’s famous comment – the socialist system of the 20th century, which departed as a tragedy, can only end up as a farce if its adherents insist on reviving it in its old form in the 21st century.

 

 

Can we think of new alternatives? Of late, I have noticed among some Left and liberal intellectuals a tendency to rekindle Gandhism as a possible alternative to capitalism and socialism. There are serious problems with such a proposition. First, some of the Gandhian ideas and practices do indeed come close to the humanitarian concerns of the ideology of socialism – emancipation and empowerment of the poor, and a moral commitment to carrying out that task by fighting against oppression and corruption.

This common ground of shared concerns was explored by Jayaprakash Narayan all through his life, and he tried out an experiment with his Navnirman movement based on the concept of Total Revolution in the late 1970s – a well-documented story which records its failure and degeneration through various stages ending up with its erstwhile leaders today occupying ministerial posts, and facing allegations of corruption and crime. Gandhism, like Marxist socialism, has been unable to stem the rot that corrupts its followers in a capitalist political system.

Besides, the Gandhian goal itself is clogged by built-in limitations. Unlike the futurist ideology of socialism, it harks back to a past and is constructed as a package of a rural Arcadia (Ram rajya) built on the traditional lines of the Sanatana Hindu religion, combined with social welfare measures expected to be initiated by the modern benevolent rich for the poor (under the concept of ‘trusteeship’). In today’s India, such a conciliatory message, apart from unwittingly lending itself to distortion and misuse by the proponents of Hindutva, sounds as utopian and irrelevant for the toiling people as the homogenizing message given by Marx to the proletariat of his days: ‘Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.’

The structural changes in the contemporary economic system have divided the workers along hierarchical and other lines. Some among them have many things to lose (their jobs, TV sets, free quarters, and so on) if they dare to break their chains of servitude to the capitalist order. Similarly, Gandhi’s rural audience too does not seem to have any use for his message. While a neo-rich farming class has developed enough stakes in the present socio-economic order and refuses to sacrifice even a fraction of its privileges to help the poor, the oppressed are increasingly seeking the alternative avenue of violent protest (e.g. the Naxalite actions in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand) to assert their rights.

 

 

This issue of the use of violence as opposed to non-violent tactics is a major problematic that disturbs and divides the various political and social activists who are engaged in devising alternative strategies to bring about a transformation in our society on the lines of equitable distribution of resources, social justice, and a democratic and secular political order. It is necessary to free the problematic from the conventional ‘either-or’ binary polarization.

The use of violence or non-violence as means or tactics cannot be regarded from a purist or absolutist point of view. The tactics vary from situation to situation, and depend on the options made available by the ruling order. Resort to violence is often determined by the compulsions (in the absence of non-violent options) imposed on the oppressed by the oppressors, on the weak by the powerful (whether in the national liberation war in Vietnam, or the popular uprisings against the corrupt socialist governments in East Europe in the recent past, or against the US-backed oppressive Israeli regime in Palestine today – or even in the Gandhi-led Quit India movement).

The choice of violence or non-violence, as tactical consideration, cannot therefore be considered as a black and white, compartmentalized issue. To borrow Rosa Luxemburg’s comment on the difference between legislative reform and revolution, violent and non-violent tactics are ‘not different methods of historic development that can be picked out at pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages.’⁴

 

 

Let us come down to brass tacks. Basically the dispute is not over violent or non-violent tactics, but over the ideology that fashions those tactics. Neither the old Marxist ideology that visualized the dictatorship of the proletariat, nor the Gandhian ideology that dreamed of a mythical harmonious past, is workable – or desirable for that matter in the present circumstances.

But socialism – by whatever term you may describe its essence – still remains valid. A system that assures equitable distribution of resources and income, social justice for all, respect for democracy, secular values and human rights – remains the best bet for the majority of our people. But it is necessary to recognize and establish socialism as a moral concept, not a mere ideology on which you build a workable system. Only that recognition might help the remoulding of the ideology of socialism in accordance with the changing needs of society and its people.

In this respect socialism – as a moral concept – has an edge over capitalism which is just a functional tool for mere accumulation of wealth. If socialism is to be established as a moral concept, its followers will have to take up the challenge of reversing the course of the ‘revolution of selfishness’ that has overtaken our people under the canopy of the capitalist free market, by attempting to transform the individual who is the main actor in the history of change.

 

 

At the same time, socialism should not be looked upon as a historically determined eventuality (as envisaged by orthodox Marxism), just as the Hindu Sangh Parivar or the Islamic fundamentalists visualize a divinely ordained Ramrajya or Dar-ul Islam. Socialism should rather be considered as a goal to be achieved in stages, through a variety of forms of combat (both armed and non-violent) marked by voluntary participation of the poor and the underprivileged, through incorporation of the various new struggles that are emerging – environmental, feminist, ethnic among others.

Socialism in India today stands on the shores of a sea of possibilities – popular movements in the unorganized sector, the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the struggles of fish workers in the coastal areas, the Naxalite movement, the women’s struggles for access to resources, the human rights and peace movements, new alliances like the Bharat Jan Andolan and Jan Sangharsh Morcha. All these struggles, however heroic, suffer from the lack of a coherent ideology and a binding organizational structure that can unitedly challenge the global order that is being imposed on our people. They are awaiting a new leadership. It is in the tangled stems and branches and twigs of these movements that the modern Arjuna would have to seek his Gandiva.

 

Footnotes:

1. An excerpt from Madhubangshir Gali composed by the Bengali poet Jyotirindra Moitra (1911-77) during the 1940s when Bengal was famished by starvation deaths against the backdrop of the Second World War. The reference is to Arjuna in the Virata- parva (fourth canto) of the Mahabharata, which describes him in hiding, when he was forced to take on the role of a eunuch called Brihannala, and hid his powerful weapon, the Gandiva bow, in the branches of a tree called Shami.

2. Interview in The Indian Express, 11 November 2003.

3. Gurcharan Das, ‘Ring in the Ringtones’, The Times of India, 2 November 2003.

4. Rosa Luxemburg, Social Reform or Revolution (1900). Reprint: Colombo, 1969, p. 59.