JULY 2013 RH

Vol. 77 No 4

JULY 2013

Rs. 20/month

THE RADICAL HUMANIST (Since April 1949) Founder Editor: M. N. Roy Formerly : Independent India (April 1937- March 1949)

520 Social Justice vs. Maoists Violence —Rajindar Sachar Manmade disaster plays havoc; New Push to Hindutava —Kuldip Nayar Celebrating Mandela’s life; A Case for a New India —Uday Dandavate North Andhra under Seize; Business Corporation as Fiefdom — K.S. Chalam Challenges before Indian Society —Ramesh Korde Our Shallow Democracy — Jawaharlal Jasthi Becky and Desta — Dipavali Sen Mo Yan:School Dropout to Nobel — Ashok K.Chaudhury Editorial: The Meaning of Life: Who gives us? —Rekha Saraswat

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

The Radical Humanist Vol. 77 Number 4 JULY 2013 Monthly journal of the Indian Renaissance Institute Devoted to the development of the Renaissance Movement; and for promotion of human rights, scientific-temper, rational thinking and a humanist view of life.

Founder Editor: M.N. Roy Editor: Dr. Rekha Saraswat Contributory Editors: Prof. A.F. Salahuddin Ahmed, Dr. R.M. Pal, Professor Rama Kundu Publisher: Mr. N.D. Pancholi Printer: Mr. N.D. Pancholi Send articles to: Dr. Rekha Saraswat, C-8, Defence Colony, Meerut, 250001, U.P., India, Ph. 91-121-2620690, 09719333011 E-mail articles at: rheditor@gmail.com Send Subscription / Donation Cheques in favour of The Radical Humanist to: Mr. Narottam Vyas (Advocate), Chamber Number 111 (Near Post Office), Supreme Court of India, New Delhi, 110001, India n.vyas@snr.net.in Ph. 91-11-22712434, 91-11-23782836, 09811944600

Please Note: Authors will bear sole accountability for corroborating the facts that they give in their write-ups. Neither IRI / the Publisher nor the Editor of this journal will be responsible for testing the validity and authenticity of statements & information cited by the authors. Also, sometimes some articles published in this journal may carry opinions not similar to the Radical Humanist philosophy; but they would be entertained here if the need is felt to debate and discuss upon them.

JULY

2013

www.theradicalhumanist.com Contents 1. From the Editor’s Desk: The Meaning of Life: Who gives us?

—Rekha Saraswat 1 2. Guests’ Section: Celebrating Mandela’s life; A Case for a New India —Uday Dandavate 2 3. Current Affairs’ Section: Manmade disaster plays havoc; New Push to Hindutava —Kuldip Nayar 6 Social Justice vs. Maoists Violence —Rajindar Sachar 10 North Andhra under Seize; Business Corporation as Fiefdom — K.S. Chalam 12 4. IRI / IRHA Members’ Section: Our Shallow Democracy — Jawaharlal Jasthi 17 Challenges before Indian Society —Ramesh Korde 20 5.Teacher's & Research Scholar's Section: Mo Yan:School Dropout to Nobel — Ashok K.Chaudhury 27 6. Book Review Section: Becky and Desta — Dipavali Sen 33 Worth a Read —Mudasir Nazar 35 7. Humanist News: Comments on Vladimir Leon’s Film: M.N. Roy: The Comintern Brahmin 38

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

swatFrom The Editor's Desk:

The Meaning of Life: Who gives us?

Can we choose to be born? No we cannot!

Can we choose to die? In normal circumstances, no! Who decides our birth? Our parents! But can our parents anticipate what will the child be as a person when he grows up? How would he decide the meaning, the purpose and the value of his life? No. When we are born we ourselves cannot know the significance of our lives but for the physical feeling of existence! The process of realization of the gist of life for each one of us starts in its own unique way because no two individuals can face identical circumstances of growth even if they are twins. We begin to define life through the primary and secondary sources concurrently. We are experiencing life on our own each moment, each day as we grow up and we are simultaneously being informed by the crowd around us how to interpret it!

The popular notions given in books regarding the rationale of life are: to realize one’s potential and ideals; to achieve biological perfection; to seek wisdom and knowledge; to be good, to do the right thing; to seek salvation; to love, to feel, to enjoy the act of living; to seek pleasure; to have power, to be better! The philosophers say the value of life is in ‘attaining the highest form of knowledge, from which all good and just things derive utility and value’. On the other hand the oracles say ‘life has no worth; one should not seek to know and understand its merit because it is actually bad’.

All those people who decided to go for a tour, religious or for sight-seeing, to the hills in the northern regions of India who will examine their purpose of life? Now that they are no more would

1

2013

they get another chance to redefine their priorities?

No. May be, they were trying to attain the highest form of happiness, pleasure or knowledge in those remote areas as acclaimed by the philosophers? But their lives proved to be worthless before Nature’s might and so, may be, the seers are true that life has no worth and no one should try to know or understand its merit. It was the vision of some creative human minds to build temples, homes and then roads to reach them on such high altitudes. It was the desire of some other business minds to build hotels there to earn from travelers who took shelter in them. It was also the project of governments to build dams for producing electricity and to give modern living facilities to the eternal multitude of human-race. Their interests clashed with the realities of nature and in the process of finding meanings to life, life itself became meaningless for them.

Ishrat Jahan looks so innocent in her pictures, now all over the newspapers and magazine covers. A beautiful life wasted so soon and in such ghastly circumstances. We may keep contemplating and investigating upon the reasons, right or wrong, of the happening. We may allow the media and people in politics and administration to remain engaged in speculation on the issue, for some time to come may be, till the elections in 2014. Whatever might have been Ishrat’s purpose of going to Ahmadabad, on a religious mission of destruction or simply on a joy trip with a friend turned foe, she has no second opportunity left now to reset her priorities and to redefine her mission and vision of life.

Coming back to the point in question, ‘the significance of life’, who so ever gives it to us, our family, our friends-circle, our society or our circumstances, the consequences, good or bad, are always to be directly borne by us, physically, mentally and emotionally. Others may cry, sympathize, repent, remember, criticize, sermonize or ridicule our reasons for why, where, when and how we defined our meaning of life continuing the Ishikawa causal diagram debate, ad infinitum......—Rekha S.

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

Guest's Section:From San Francisco, U.S.A. have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner”.

A Jewish friend recently gave me an innovative idea for bringing peace to the West Bank. He said, “Israeli and Palestinian forces have perfected the art of resistance and retaliation through violent means. What if instead of indulging in violence those who want to see true peace in the west bank, faced their opponents with non-violent demonstrations? The security forces and the leaders who have a stake in perpetuating violence in the region would be at a loss. Their armed forces will not know how to deal with non-violent Satyagraha (assertion of truth)”. My friend proceeded to suggest an alternate scenario, where, “instead of fighting for two separate countries would it be possible to consider an inclusive society that allows both Palestinians and Israelis to live together peacefully?” He pointed out- that “a vision for two opposing parties to co-exist was the most impactful strategy that helped Nelson Mandela and F W de Klerk to end apartheid and share power”. A similar consideration for saving his nation from conflict between Hindus and Muslims was in the mind of Mahatma Gandhi when he wanted the leadership of the Congress Party of India to reject British government’s proposal for division of India as a precondition for freedom.

Gandhi went to the extent of suggesting that either the congress party should reject the proposal and continue the freedom struggle in a non-violent manner or make a counter offer to the British of making Mohammad Ali Jinnah Prime Minister of undivided India. Gandhi failed to prevail upon the Congress leadership, which accepted separation of India and Pakistan. The communal riots and mass massacre that followed partition of India created a permanent setback to the process of integration of India.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.

Nelson Mandela learned from India’s missed opportunity for embarking on long-term social

[Uday Dandavate studies people, cultures and trends worldwide and uses the understanding gained from such studies to inspire people centered innovation strategies.

He heads up a design research consulting firm called SonicRim in U.S.A. He Uday Dandavate frequently writes and speaks on topics related to people centered design and innovation in international journals and conferences.]

Celebrating Mandela’s life: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear”.

Nelson Mandela serves as a role model for revolutionaries worldwide who want to replace discrimination and injustice with an egalitarian and peaceful society. In comparing various mass movements for social justice and struggles against oppressive regimes, non-violent methods, espoused by Mandela, stand out as the most difficult yet impactful tools for sustainable transformation of societies. While Karl Marx mobilized the working class with the vision of “dictatorship of the proletariat”, Mahatma Gandhi introduced into the vernacular of revolutionaries the concept of non-violent resistance and Satyagraha (assertion of truth). Followers of Marxian ideologies only succeeded in replacing one kind of authoritarian rule with another kind. On the other hand proponents of non-violence such as Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi were able to introduce into mass imagination an alternate model of an egalitarian society that is inclusive of boththe supporters and the opponents of the system they wanted to replace.

“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you 2

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

harmony. He prevailed upon the African National Congress leadership to commit to a South Africa where the Black and the White population could, forget the history of violence between them and build a multi-racial South Africa together. For the younger generation Buddha, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. are only characters from the history books. Nelson Mandela, on the other hand, serves as an example from the present times. Through deft handling of dismantling of the Apartheid, Mandela has demonstrated that non-violent methods and inclusive mindsets can alone provide a long-term solution to conflicts that are dividing nations and prompting them to take up arms at slightest provocation. Nelson Mandela has also demonstrated that a leader can have a profound influence on his people even after relinquishing power (as he did after one term in the office as the President of South Africa).

In a political environment where occupying positions of power by hook or by crook is seen as the only means of solving country’s problems, and being the voice of dissent an unpatriotic act, Mandela’s experiment of partnering with the perpetrators of injustice against the black population in building the future of South Africa stands out as an inspiration. Just as Mahatma Gandhi served as an inspiration for leaders of non-violent revolutions around the world, Nelson Mandela’s life will serve as a beacon for those who want to see a world free from conflict. Nelson Mandela will live for a long time in the imagination of revolutionaries. Let us all join South Africa in celebrating a life that is bound to inspire imagination of a peaceful and intercultural future.

A Case for a New India: The chasm between established political parties and people has never been as wide before.

However, recent surge of spontaneous protests in the streets during the Lok Pal movement and the anti rape demonstrations gives us a hope that average Indian is today looking for dismantling of the corrupt system and is eager to get mobilized to make democracy work. Protesters in the street are

3

2013

angry because India of today does not look like the dream Bhagat sigh, Sukhdev and Rajguru sacrificed their lives for, nor does it look like the vision of “Swaraj” Lokmanya Tilak had envisioned. It is, therefore, time to remember the sacrifices of thousands of freedom fighters who gave their lives to liberate India from the 200 year long rule of the British. It is time to understand why Indian voters are faced with a shrinking number of honest representatives and a growing pool of economic offenders and religious zealots. Looking at the two dominant political parties and the forces that are driving them will help us better appreciate the need to reboot the system. The congress party of India has taken advantage of its legacy from the freedom struggle for too long. The 1969 split of the congress party and recognition of the splinter group as Congress-I (Indira Congress) ended any pretense the Congress party had of being the same congress party that fought for India’s freedom. Jawaharlal Nehru sowed the seeds of dynastic rule by grooming his daughter to succeed him. The Nehru Gandhi family’s dominance over the congress party resembles the trend of industrial families controlling publicly traded companies even with minority stake. In fact British Industrialist Swaraj Paul brought this truth about surreptitious control of families in publicly traded companies through an attempt at hostile take over of DCM and Excorts Limited during Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s rule. Swaraj Paul’s attempts were defeated with the intervention of the high command in the congress party. The list of economic offences and scams under the congress rule continues to grow with every passing year. It is being widely circulated on the Internet. Having ruled India for too long congress party has become captive to corrupting forces of corporations, landlords and bureaucrats. Vested interests have no political loyalties. They will purchase anyone in power. That is what happened to the congress party. Voting for congress party means perpetuating the network of vested interests. The Bharatiya Janata Party, on the other hand, is a re-packaged version of the Jan Sangh, a party that

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

airports that is accorded to only one other private individual- The Dalai Lama. The contempt the Gandhi family has for democratic norms can also be seen from the fact that the prime minister of India has not faced direct election and instead was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Assam. To prove his domicile in the state of Assam, he has rented a home in which he has never lived. He will go into the history as the longest serving Prime Minister who never had the popular mandate to serve the people, but occupied the constitutional position by serving the interest of the Gandhi family, until it was time for him to be dispensed with. Lal Krishna Advani of the BJP, on the other hand, was the darling of the religious zealots as long as he spoke their script. He led a frenzied mob of Bajrang Dal and volunteers of RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad to Ayodhya and engineered demolition of the Babri Masjid. The parliamentary elections following Shri Advani’s ratha yatra fell short of achieving a full majority for the BJP. The party propped up Atal Bhihari Vajpayee as a moderate Prime Minister of a coaltion. Vajpayee was often referred as the moderate mask of the BJP. Religious zealots used his moderate image to cobble up a coalition and at the same time continued pursuing their long-term goal of gaining absolute Power. Atal Bihari was able to sustain a coalition of parties with diverse ideologies with his ambivalent public utterances.

He recognized the need for pan India appeal more than Lal Krishna Advani did. Madhu Dandavate called Vajpayee a hard hitting softliner and Advani a soft spoken hardliner. As the Foreign Minister in Morarji Desai government Atal Bihari Vajpayee had championed strong ties with Pakistan. During his Prime Ministership he chided Narendra Modi after the Gujrat riots and advised him to follow “Raja Dharma” and resign. As a result, the brand Vajpayee became more palatable to the minorities and other secular allies of NDA than the brand Advani. Despite having denigrated the idea of secularism for decades, L K Advani travelled to Pakistan and publicly called Mohammad Ali Jinah (the founder of Pakistan) a secular leader. The RSS

always championed the dream of Hindu Rashtra. In other words, BJP has always built a cadre of followers around the long-term goal of homogenizing India and limiting the participation of minorities (especially the Muslims) in the democracy. The younger generation of voters may not know that the members of Jan Sangh did not participate in India’s freedom struggle.

The ideology of Jan Sangh was responsible for assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, who relentlessly championed greater respect for India’s diversity.

The proponents of Hindu Rashtra looked for every opportunity to advance their objectives. The parent organization of the Bharatiya Janata party, the RSS, has for years sowed the seeds of hatred towards minorities in the minds of people. Just as the congress party became an instrument for economic offenders the Bharatiya Janata Party became an instrument for religious zealots. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal, Shri Ram Sene, Shiv Sena, and every other organization that thrive on manipulation of religious sensitivities for power-play have found in the BJP, an instrument for perpetuating their long term goals. In this power play the leaders only become pawns, they are discarded as they outlive their utility to the vested interests. Manhoman Singh was used as a pawn for the Gandhi family. His greatest qualification was his lack of personal ambition for power and his job was to keep the Prime Ministership occupied while a scion of the Gandhi family was ready to take over.

After his election as the Prime Miniter, a veteran congress leader, Mani Shankar Iyar declared on CNN, “She (Sonia Gandhi) is the queen of India.

She has only appointed a regent (Man Mohan Singh) to take care of some state matters.” As the chairman of the National Advisory Committee Sonia Gandhi enjoys influence that surpasses that of the Prime Minister but yet, she is not answerable to the Parliament. She is accorded Z-Plus category security that is only accorded to the Prime Minister and the President of India. Even her son-in-law Robert Vedra enjoyes security clearance at Indian 4

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

saw in Advani’s speech a betrayal of their cause. L K Advani’s utility as the instrument of perpetuating “Hindu Rashtra” was compromised in the eyes of the religious zealots. Unfortunately for them, due to failing health, Atal Bihari Vajpayee had to relinquish the leadership of NDA to L.K. Advani.

Under the leadership of Lal Krishna Advani, BJP failed to bring to the National Democratic Alliance back to power on its own. His utility to the cause of Hindu Rashtra was further eroded. In the meanwhile, in the state of Gujrat, Narendra Modi emerged as the new icon for the protagonists of Hindu Rashtra. Narendra Modi was able to take advantage of a nation reeling with fear and anger after a series of terrorist attacks and exposes of large-scale corruption in the government. He made development and supremacy of Hindu majority a plank for his politics. By repeatedly delivering electoral successes in the state of Gujrat, Narendra Modi was able to sell to the public imagination the idea of “Development combined with Ethnic Cleansing” as the solution to the problem of terrorism and underdevelopment. Since nothing succeeds like success, Narendra Modi’s experiment began to attract the forces that were earlier supporting L.K. Advani. In him, they found a more effective leader who could deliver on the promise of “Hindu Rashtra”. To a nation tired of rampant corruption and frequent acts of terrorism, brand Narendra Modi is now being sold as a fresh idea worth giving a try. It was time to retire the brand Advani. It is not a surprise that after vehemently denying any role of RSS in the promotion of Narendra Modi as the new chairman of the campaign committee of the BJP Rajnath Singh, the president of BJP, had to eat a humble pie. L.K. Advani exposed the machinations of the RSS by forcing its chief Mohan Bhagwat to come to his house and arm twist him into submission in favor of Narendra Modi. The path is now cleared for Narendra Modi to take his pilot project from Gujarat to India. L K Advani decided to expose the very clique that opted to discard him after his utility was over. Please picture this in your imagination- if 5

2013

Narendra Modi succeeds in installing BJP government in Delhi, Shri Ram Sene will be his moral police, Bajrang Dal his Vanar sena, and Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s ideology his public policy. Sadhu Samaj will assume the role of the saffron politburo and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat will intervene in every government decision, just as he did in getting Lal Krishna Advani out of Narendra Modi’s path. It is clear form his public posturing that Narendra Modi is indirectly selling the idea that India needs a benevolent dictator. Those who are willing to consider the option of a benevolent dictatorship as a solution to India’s problems must be reminded of the days of emergency between the years 1975 and 1977. During emergency citizen’s fundamental rights were suspended and the Prime Minister assumed immunity from prosecution even for criminal acts; power mongers at every level of administration played havoc with ordinary citizens.

Corruption increased. The rate of bribes went up.

The police exercised their power to harass ordinary citizens with impunity. There was no recourse for poor citizens when youth congress workers led by Sanjay Gandhi forcibly castrated millions of citizens under the auspices of government sponsored Family Planning program. The positive spin on emergency was provided by Vinoba Bhave, who ironically called it a “Anushasan Parva” (era of self discipline). Emergency reminded me of Soviet Union during communist era. This is not the India our freedom fighters sacrificed their lives for.

This is not the India that is out in the streets asking for Lok Pal Bill to be passed by the Parliament.

This is not the India that rose in unison to protest the rape against Nirbhaya in Delhi and faced water cannons of Delhi police at the India Gate. This is not the India that followed Anna Hazare, a selfless Gandhian, who is travelling around India trying to invite the youth to participate in building of a new Swaraj of our dreams. As the election campaign heats up, let us not limit our choices to economic offenders and religious zealots and look for new representatives, who will help create a new India.

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

Current Affairs Section:

Manmade disaster plays havoc: Not long ago, a disaster in any part of the country would elicit national response. People would go door-to-door to collect money, clothes, utensils, medicines and many other things of daily use to transmit through agencies which were voluntarily engaged in relief and rehabilitation work. The attitude has changed in the last few years. People are, no doubt, concerned and sympathetic. But there is no countrywide effort to organize help. The atmosphere is no more animated with the zeal which I recall used to be there.

Take the example of Uttrakhand. The devastation has been on a massive scale. More than 5,000 people have reportedly died and the material loss runs into hundreds of crores of rupees. Yet the reaction has been tepid. Efforts are visible on individual scale. But the nation as such is not concerned. Particularly, the states in the south and the east have shown less involvement. The governments, both in the hilly state of Uttrakhand and at the Centre, were too late to respond and had no clue what to do. Even after 10 days of the disaster, 20,000 people were stranded at different places. What dominated the discussion was not the scale of assistance but whether it was man-made or the nature’s fury. Of course, it was man-made. The reasons are obvious.

The trees to accommodate the ever growing bureaucracy were cut. The de-silting of river is out of any government’s agenda. The National Disaster Management Board was tried for the first time and found wanting. Political parties have done nothing concrete except politicizing the tragedy. The official appeal to contribute to the Prime Minister’s Relief fund has been issued as a matter of routine.

Surprisingly, no foreign country has offered help to evacuate the stranded people, much less any material assistance. Pakistan has missed a golden opportunity to befriend the common Indian.

Islamabad should have sent trucks of food and medicines to the Wagha border. New Delhi would have lost face if it had stopped the aid. If one were

From New Delhi—

Kuldip Nayar [Kuldip Nayar is a veteran Indian journalist, syndicated columnist, human right activist and author, noted for his long career as a left-wing political commentator. He was in Indian Foreign Service a diplomat and also nominated as a Member of the upper house of the Indian Parliament in 1997. He is also a human right activist and a peace activist. He was a member of India's delegation to the United Nations in 1996.

He was appointed High Commissioner to Great Britain in 1990 and nominated to the upper house of Indian Parliament, Rajya Sabha in August 1997. He writes columns and op-eds for over 80 newspapers in 14 languages including The Daily Star, The Sunday Guardian, The News (Pakistan), Express Tribune (Pakistan), Dawn (Pakistan). Every year since 2000, Nayar has been leading peace activists to light candles on the Independence days of Pakistan and India (14/15 August) at the Attari-Wagah India-Pakistan border near Amritsar. He has been working to free Indian prisoners in Pakistan and Pakistani prisoners in India, who have completed their sentences, but have not been set free. He has also authored 15 books, including “Beyond the Lines”, “Distant Neighbours: A Tale of the Subcontinent”, “India after Nehru”, “Wall at Wagah, India-Pakistan Relationship”, “The Judgement”, “The Martyr”, “Scoop” and “India House” kuldipnayar09@gmail.com.]

6

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

to analyse the tragedy, one would come to the conclusion that the nation has lost sensitivity.

Different states have over the years become islands by themselves and there is hardly any tragedy which transcends the border. When it came to rescuing the victims, states like West Bengal and Gujarat preferred to evacuate the habitants of their own area. The absence of national feeling may well be the reason that every state is putting up dams in catchment areas. They think that the consequential loss is to other states not to them. And so many dams have come up that they are counterproductive. Of course, the money spent has enough leeway for corruption at political and official levels. The land and timber mafias have played havoc at the expense of the nation.

The countrywide coordination is possible at the level of environment ministry. It can also ensure that ecology is not disturbed. But the ministry is so much under pressure from different lobbies and state governments that it has become only a signing authority. The area around Uttrakhand is so fragile that the central government did not want to disturb the ecology. But both political parties, the Congress and the BJP, joined hands to have the proposal scuttled. And the behavior of the people in Uttrakhand itself was inhuman. There are instances to show how shopkeepers charged exorbitant prices for things of daily use. A biscuit packet was sold for Rs. 200. A loaf of bread was priced at Rs. 100. There are instances of looting and even molesting of women. One woman required medical help. But her gold chain was pulled from her neck and she was left bleeding. Even sadhus and sants made most of the situation, robbing money and ornaments from the deceased.

The only bright side is the work done by the army and the air force. They evacuated thousands of people stuck at different places. The survivors in fact narrated the difference between the government which did not do anything and the army and air force which rescued them and gave food and shelter. One air force helicopter, engaged in rescue operation, crashed because of bad 7

2013

weather. Twenty lives were lost. India is a heartless state. Over the years, it has deteriorated in values.

There is not a semblance of idealism left to talk about social justice or to lift the lower half to the level where it can lead a viable living. Poverty, unemployment and malnutrition, signs of a decaying society, are increasing day by day. We are, almost back to the Hindu growth rate of 4 per cent. A dollar fetches Rs. 60. In fact, the rupee is in shambles.

Today’s spectacle of poor growth and the dismal future is because political parties have catered to their fiefdoms without keeping before them the picture of India on the whole or the growth of every sector or every area. Unfortunately, the parties have not realized that their politics may feather their nests but would not take the country forward.

Both the Congress and the BJP, the two main parties are most to blame. They have seen to it that they do not compromise even though a bit of cooperation would have done wonders. Parliament has been more or less standstill. No business has been transacted session after session, creating a new record of inactivity. The parties admit this and some leading members have no hesitation in saying so in private. Yet they do not cross the line even word-wise in the house lest it should harm them.

India does not have much leeway. The speed with which we are going down the hill indicates a ruin of great magnitude. There is every reason why the two main parties should come together to take the country further. They should at least have a joint action on the rehabilitation of victims. But that would require a stand above party line. In today’s approach to occupy the kursi, it is difficult to imagine that any political party would place the national interest first. Even several disasters like the one at Uttrakhaned cannot change the thinking of political parties. It is tragic, but true.

New Push to Hindutava: Politics in India may not be the same again. The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has charged the agenda. It has introduced pure communalism to the

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

soft Hindutava that prevailed so far. By appointing the hardliner Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief Minister, the panel chief for the 2014 parliament election, the party has dropped every bit of ambiguity over secularism. It is stark Hinduism for all to see. Apparently, the old leadership resisted the decision. Tall L.K. Advani had even submitted his resignation from all the posts he held in the party. Yet the irresponsible younger cadre was in no mood to accommodate the sober point of view.

For them, a sharper communal politics was the minimum. Advani had reportedly warned behind the walls that Modi was not a proper person for India.

The atmosphere may become bitterer when the BJP propagates the Hindu Rashtriyawad openly. True, the concept goes against the very grain of the constitution which wanted the country a secular democratic republic. But the BJP has found no benefit from it. In the future, the very word, secularism, will come under different interpretations. Parties, however parochial in outlook, will claim to be secular. Therefore, Modi’s acceptance speech was understandably vehement against the Congress, the largest political party which has come to be associated with secularism.

He wants the party to disappear from the scene so that there is no confusion between the BJP, a Hindu outfit, and the Congress, with secular credentials.

This may or may not happen but the BJP has embarked upon the task of wiping the slate clean with no mention of secularism whatsoever. Since independence, even long before it, the freedom struggle was based on the idea of an independent India which would know no difference on the basis of community or caste.

The leaders immersed in that struggle agreed to India’s partition but not to the thesis that the religion could be mixed with politics. Secularism is thus the corner stone of the structure that India has tried to raise after partition. It has not been an ideal effort. Yet it has kept the country together, with no recurring example of communal divide.

In the process, the nation has also come to recognize the distance between the communal forces and the secular elements. It has resulted into a healthy development: secular political parties have generally kept away from the BJP to stall its installation at the Centre. The induction of Modi may not defeat the process. But it will definitely confuse the Hindus who, leave some apart, are animated with cosmopolitan thoughts. They stopped the BJP winning in the last two parliamentary election because when the time for casting votes came, they put their weight behind the liberal forces which has kept the country more or less midway neither left or right. The danger of its going right has increased now.

RSS, which has initiated and supported Modi sees in him someone nearer to their ideology of Hindutava and anti-Muslim. Real Modi was, however, exposed when he blessed the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat a decade ago. Not a word of regret even after years only underlines his anti-Muslim thinking. How can India have a person like him as the Prime Minister?

The repercussions of such a person at the helm of BJP, not possessing even a semblance of liberalism, can be dangerous. Obsessed with driving a wedge between Hindus and Muslims, he can vitiate the young mind. Liberalism or idealism already receding to the background, bigotries and the extremism will go to allocate what is left of the composite culture.

When I was India’s High Commissioner at London, Prime Minister Margret Thatcher asked me the secret of India staying together for centuries. I told her that we did not believe that the country was divided intoblack and white. We believed that there was a vast grey area. We went on expanding that area. That was our secularism. The idea kept the nation together. She was reportedly impressed by my explanation and she told this to Soviet President Gorbachev. He sent a delegation to India to study the strength of grey area, secularism. Modi will make black further bleak and shut every opening

8

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

for the grey area to expand. In the last few decades, the BJP has purveyed the impression that it is looking for a space that will give it an image of being right of Right, that of pro-Hindu but not of extremist. Modi will stop such an ideology developing. It will be saffron all the way. The BJP has foolishly come to realize that it would have to sharpen difference with the Muslims to look different. It believes that if there is any time to play the Hindu card, it is now. This is a wrong thinking, leaving no space for even small gestures for conciliation.

Advani’s presence evokes hope. The greatest benefit of Modi’s importance will be to the Congress. Not that it is intrinsically secular but it has the reputation of being so. The Muslim electorate, nearly 15 per cent, will move towards

2013

the Congress and adversely affect large parties like of Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi party, which has a large Muslim following in UP. The party’s image is also secular. The Congress will gain because the next election is not that of state assembly but of Parliament. The Muslims, know the importance.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the BJP’s allies, may still part company with the party.

The real loss is that of the Indian nation. At a time when it looks that the various elements have found their identity within the country, Modi’s image of parochialism comes in the open. The idea of India will be jeopardized. It is a pity that the country will be unsettling when it is settling down to an ideology which may not be purely secular but does not disturb people of different faiths to live a life of their own in their own way.

Letter to the Editor: Rekha, I have received the June issue yesterday. I will, for the time being (?), just comment on one article: "The Mind and Momentum" by Uday Dandavate.

When a ball rolls down a slope (let us say, an idealized frictionless one) under gravity its potential energy decreases and the kinetic energy increases, the sum remaining constant. According to Uday Dandvate's "equations" one would have to interpret that as "wisdom" increasing as "knowledge" decreases. There can be cases, easily constructed, where knowledge would increase with decreasing wisdom. Better not make such equations at all. In fact one should not start by thinking mind and matter as distinct and then start drawing parallels.

Amazing (and quite troubling!) progress has been made in very directly relating electromagnetic impulses in our neural networks to what we are used to think of as words in our minds. Electrodes attached to the head of a totally paralyzed person, who cannot move or speak, can transmit his thoughts to a robot who, correctly interpreting the electromagnetic pulses in the brain of the subject, can bring, say, a glass of water. This is just one example. Our thoughts are thus seen to be fully encoded in the electromagnetic pulses spreading out in our neural circuits. One should think deeply about what this implies in the context of our usual conceptions concerning what we call our minds".

"Human Brain Project" has been set in motion, near Lausanne, with major financial support from the European states. The aim is nothing less than to build an adequate computer model of the human brain (that is of our "mental" activities). Will the goal be attained? One will know that only a posteriori. To start with one has to build a sufficiently powerful computer (an "exaflop" to use the technical term).

Amitabha Chakrabarti, chakrabarti.amitabha@neuf.fr Paris, France 9

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

From New Delhi —

Rajindar Sachar [Justice Rajindar Sachar is Retd. Chief Justice of

High Court of Delhi, New Delhi. He is UN Special Rapportuer on Housing, Ex. Member, U.N. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities and Ex-President, Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) India.]

Social Justice vs.

Maoists Violence The recent murderous attack by Maoists in Chhattisgarh resulting in death of 28 persons, including Congress leaders, their security officers and ordinary villages of area, has to be treated as a diabolical act by the self-styled leaders of the “revolutionary movement”, CPI (Maoist), who delude themselves that they are struggling for bringing about a revolution of workers and peasants. One of the seriously injured persons, senior Congress leader VC Shukla, died on Wednesday. In fact, I would describe the activities of these “revolutionaries” a massive mad act which has damaged greatly the cause of tribals. It is also most foul as Maoists have tried to stop political activity they do not agree with through violent means. Their politics is as evil as those they claim to be fighting against and should be rejected outright by all those who stand for democratic norms in political struggles for peace with justice.

10

If people expected that the two major political parties will, realising the urgency of the situation, forget their petty public posturing, they were mistaken. While Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and Chief Minister Raman issue a statement that they are going to work together, state Congress leaders have announced that they are boycotting the all-party meeting called by the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister. Even within Congress high-ups there is now a sharp division – while one Central minister, who used to take a somewhat humanitarian approach to the Maoist problem, now calls them “terrorists”, a Central tribal minister has rightly warned against this approach and reproached the state government for having encouraged Salwa Judum’s sinful strategy, and which was also so commented adversely by the Supreme Court.

Even the normally conservative Planning Commission has suddenly thought fit to suggest universal coverage and to away with the BPL test in 22 most backward of 82 IAP districts. Did we need these murders to face the reality of the total deprivation of the tribals and their desperation which provides easy catch to Naxalite groups.

Naxalite leaders have made no secret of their aim.

They feel (though in my opinion they are disastrously mistaken) that by spreading terror and trying to keep some areas outside the civil authority, they would one day be able to launch a fierce onslaught to capture political power in Delhi even if they are said to have a strong presence in 185 districts out of the total 607 districts. This is because the Indian state, however weak, will never be so weak as to allow itself to be taken over by such rump groups, even if it is able to equip itself with some arms – the fire power of a modern state is too overwhelmingly superior to Maoist groups.

The real reason for Maoist presence is the indefensible antipathy of the government to follow the policy of development with justice to the tribals, which alone will make Maoist influence wither away.

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

But that requires taking on the corporate sector which is ravishingly exploiting the mineral wealth and denying to the tribals even their modest share.

Why does the government not accept the suggestion of human right organizations, including the PUCL, to hold public discussions on this vital matter in the presence of tribal leaders, among others? Is the reason the presence of many mine owners belonging to the ruling party at the Centre?

This charge finds support from the continued detention of Soni Suri, a social worker among tribals, on a fake charge of being a conduit for passing money to Maoists on behalf of a mining company given to her by company’s contractor – inexplicably he has been denied bail, but the contractor or the owner has not been arrested. One is pained to see this strange nexus between the ruling party and the corporate sector.

Of course, I accept that the Maoist act of brutality and terrorism can never be justified, even if they be in response to equally heinous and brutal acts unleashed by the security forces, as we are seeing presently in Chhattisgarh. This situation no doubt poses a knotty question and the Supreme Court has answered thus: “Indeed, we recognise that the state faces many serious problems on account of Maoist/Naxalite violence. Notwithstanding the fact that there may be social and economic circumstances, and certain policies followed by the state itself, leading to the emergence of extremist violence, we cannot condone it. The state necessarily has the obligation, moral and constitutional, to combat such extremism and provide security to the people of the country.

“However the primordial problem lies deep within the socio-economic policies pursued by the state in

2013

a society that was already endemically and horrifically suffering from gross inequalities. Our Constitution provides the guidelines within which the state is to act, both to assert such authority to transgress those guidelines is to act unlawfully, to imperil the moral and legal authority of the state and the Constitution.”

It is, however, very important that the revolting nature of extremist acts cannot serve as a basis or pretext for the governments to disregard their national and international obligations, the caution highlighted by the International Council of Jurists in its Berlin Declaration on August 28, 2004, namely that “both contemporary human rights and humanitarian law allow states a reasonably wide margin of flexibility to combat terrorism without contravening human rights and humanitarian legal obligations.

A warning has been given in a report titled “Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas” by an expert group constituted by the Planning Commission of India in the following manner: “In the case of tribes in particular it has ended up in destroying their social organization, cultural identity, and resource base.....which cumulatively makes them increasingly vulnerable to exploitation.”

And yet, all that the government does is not to face the causes of the rage and despair that nurture such movements. Instead, it considers the matter as a menace, a law and order problem that is to be rooted out with the use of force. This cycle of mindless violence and counter-violence may continue unless the state honestly acts in the interest of the poor and the tribals, and does not connive with corporate mine owners in their exploitive acts.

Dear Friends, Please send articles not beyond 1500-2000 words at: rheditor@gmail.com. Send them by post (only if you are not able to email them) at: C-8 Defence Colony, Meerut, 250001, U.P., India.

You should also inform me if they have been published elsewhere. Do email or post your passport size photographs as separate attachments (in JPG format) along with your brief introductions, if you are contributing for the RH for the first time. Contact No.: 91-9719333011 —Rekha S.

11

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

From Hyderabad—

K.S. Chalam [Prof K.S.Chalam, former Member, UPSC, New Delhi, former Vice-Chancellor, Dravidian University, Kuppam, A.P., is known as the pioneer of the Academic Staff College Scheme in the country as the scheme was strengthened by UGC on the basis of his experiments in 1985. He became the first founder director of the Academic Staff College at Andhra University in 1987. He was actively involved in the teachers’ movement, secular and rationalist activities and served as the National Secretary, Amnesty International during 1984-85. chalamkurmana@gmail.com]

North Andhra under Seize bickering of leaders in the city Theof recent Visakhapatnam reminds us how the destiny of Uttarandhra or Northern Circars is intimately connected to the skirmishes of settlers for control over the land and people from the time of Anglo-French wars in the South. It was Anand Gjapathi Raju who invited the English to occupy Northern Circars after the infamous war with the Bobbili dynasty in 1748 9 (with French support).

Later this part transferred to Nizam who had leased the region from Rajahmunddry to Chicacole to Hasan Ali Khan in 1765. Thus, the region was always in turmoil. There seem to be some kind of historical vengeance against the people of Kalingandhra (part of great Kalinga or Mahadandaka) by the aliens who were prevented from entering the home land of Native Indians from the time of Rigveda and continued under the pretext of control over Dakshinapath by several

12

white and blue emperors. The people of the area however, remained recalcitrant and never obliged the dictates of the foreign powers. Why was this region remained like this?

My friend Chandu Subbarao in his article on ‘Dissent Culture and Protest Movements in North Andhra’ in the ‘South India Journal of Social Sciences’, narrated how the socio-economic factors were responsible for the first masterpiece in Telugu

by Gurajada Appa Rao and how Gidugu Ramamurthy his friend became a crusader of spoken Telugu from the same region. He has also drawn our attention to the contributions of Thapi Dharama Rao, Sri Sri, Ravi Sastry and others that remained a backdrop of agrarian struggles in the region. This is all remained now as past glory of the region and the contemporary situation makes anyone enthralled for its obstinate character of nonentity?

Thus, it is necessary to look at the historical past of the country/region to understand the significance of the region and the deep prejudice against it.

India as it is known after the Middle Ages was only Mahadandaka in the peninsula before the 56 so called Anga, Vanga , Kalinga etc countries were identified in the Epics and Puranas. Perhaps, it was only this part of the country that had an independent identity and stable rulers to spread the message of Gautama Buddha in far and wide might be an eyesore for aliens. It is recorded by some scholars that the representatives of this region had established colonies in East Asia and influenced the culture of the whole of Asia till the Hindu revivalism started and Mediterranean faiths enslaved the locals. There were no colonies for the North Western part of India to boast off as it was always under the campaign of some alien powers.

Further, Northern circars had perennial rivers and resources with hard working labour force with a culture of obligation to serve. This perhaps attracted several groups to settle here and marginalised the docile locals. One can notice the kind of valasas (passages) like Kothavalasa, Thallavalasa etc in every nook and corner of the

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

region signifying how settlers landed here for succour and sustenance.

The historically and culturally identified region is now reduced to three northern districts of the state which was once under Visakhapatnam district till 1950. The leaders of the region including the Prime Minister of Madras presidency and freedom fighters like PVG Raju, Gouthu Latchanna, Tenneti Viswanadham and several others played a very significant role in the formation of Andhra Pradesh including the decisive resolution demanding a separate state at the Andhra Mahasabha meeting in Visakhapatnam (1915).The problems of the region manifested around 1960s when the hegemony of coastal Andhra has emerged and completely dissolved under the weight of regional upsurge in the 1980s. The typical social categories in the form of OBCs got a lease of life and started linking with other equivalent castes elsewhere. This has two kinds of effect. One, the isolated caste groups of the region merged with others in the state to yield some social power. Two, identity of the region in terms of the unique social categories have disappeared making way for others to enter and interact with locals for social intercourse. This seems to have an adverse impact on the identity of the region and finally made the locals as junior partners in all economic, social and political movements.

The situation today in the Northern district, Srikakulam is very gloomy as the senior most leader of the region who had a national presence died in a tragic accident and another competent leader is languishing in legal quagmire. There is a clear political vacuum in the district while the people of the district in their indomitable belligerent spirit continuing their struggles against contemporary prejudice of locating all polluting industries in the region. The neighbouring Vizianagaram with newly emerging leadership both at the state and national level seem to have been ostracised due to their stand on contentious issues. The district is the most backward in the state of Andhra Pradesh with one of the least populated 13

2013

and highest out migration characters. The district has recorded the lowest growth rate along with west Godavari during 2001-2011 due to migration and has lost two of its MLA seats. There is wide spread unrest in the district in the recent weeks due to scarcity of water and the non-payment of wages under NAREGA. It is strange to see a district that was recorded as one of the most progressive in the implementation of the scheme is in the news due to underpayment and delay of settlement of wages.

Visakhapatnam district was one of the largest during the British India witnessing the pre-mutiny events in the Navy is not yet systematically studied and recorded, is jewel in the crown of East India.

Visakha is the symbol of all that is known about Buddhist culture and history with a melancholic world view of the locals when they are exploited and cheated with a remark ‘Eti sestam babu’. The character of assimilation and nonchalant attitude of the locals became a fragile point for settlers to exploit and appropriate the land and resources at ridiculously throwaway prices in the 1970s. It was later converted in to real estate and the wealth was transferred to Hyderabad to capture the emerging opportunities under a new socio-economic dispensation. The providence of the region had it that the same wealth is ploughed back here in the form of investments to pollute the entire region. It is not weird to find that the Pharmaceuticals that were discarded in the West due to pollution found their route via Hyderabad finally to settle in Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam (Paidi Bhimavaram).

The situation in North Andhra is so alarming that there was hardly any report of industrial mishaps in Visakhapatnam before, has witnessed now around 5000 industrial fire accidents during 2006-2012(TOI). It is reported that 180 people were killed in the accidents injuring 356 during the same period. It is a common sight in the region that scores of pedestrians or passengers are killed in the road accidents due to crammed commuters or unauthorised travel in trucks. Trucks and unlicensed transport vehicles are used by the poor

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

for transport from remote inaccessible places to centres of opportunities like Hyderabad, Howrah, Bhilai etc. The whole of Odissa and Andhra border has only the so called illegal transport system that care less for the safety and security of the passengers killing in hundreds in unreported accidents.

Though the country and state boast of its economic development, the region has not received any substantial industrial investment except the discarded polluting industries like Pharmaceuticals and thermal power on the coast. The three districts have half of the coastal zone of Andhra Pradesh.

But, there seem to be not even a major project in the region utilising the scarce natural resources of the coast during the last few years except those that were established by the government for strategic reasons. The neighbouring districts like East Godavari and coastal areas up to Nellore are industrialised may be at the cost of North Andhra. It is reported that some of the central government offices are shifted to neighbouring districts with the full knowledge of the people’s representatives. The city has failed to complete its only fly over project for the last five years in the centre of the beautiful city while some leaders are incisive for public properties to grab. The misfortune of the region is that there is no one to raise the issues of the local people except the elegant media statements issued by the secretaries of people’s representatives (who are settlers). The city is supposed to be the centre of North Andhra is devoid of its local leader to raise the existential issues of common man. Does the situation ripen for another alien intervention?

Business Corporation as Fiefdom of the economic frauds during the Most last few years in the country are exhumed in the world of business enterprises.

There are however, instances of other realms where such incidences are manifested like the BCCI/IPL.

14

Though, we have inherited different kinds of business organisations through the colonial legacy, the Joint-Stock company or Business Corporation and few others are found to be very prominent. The Managing Agency System introduced by the British to run some businesses through Indian agents like the Tea gardens etc are abolished and they are only part of history now. The kind of business organisations that conquer commerce and trade is a very important unit of analysis for understanding the resilience of Capitalism in the twenty first century. The triumph of world capitalism is declared by experts as final for there is no alternative (TINA) to it particularly after the Soviet and Chinese experiences.

The efficiency and the democratic space provided by the Business Corporation is eulogised by Management gurus as the most sustainable model that is beyond disparagement. In fact, we have dozens of treatises and memoirs by great innovators and entrepreneurs who became icons overnight after the 1991 economic policy. They have all used the public / private Corporation as a tool to accumulate capital and run the business. It is claimed that the company/ corporation as a registered business organisation is within the values of democracy and at the same time enjoy freedom to do what is good for the company or corporation. This is one of the most important innovations adopted by the Capitalist system to compete and outwit a demoralised totalitarian Soviet model.

Though the modern capitalist system is far ahead of what its critiques hypothesised during nineteenth century, the intellectual and media support during the current phase has disguised most of its failures, are now discernible. The money that is invested to outsource the intellectual discourse on Capitalism seems to have failed to endure the system from its moral and intellectual collapse in the form of 2008 recession and its aftermath. We have today episodes of economic breakdown everywhere.

There is a serious upshot in the ethical dimension of business ventures due to the unscrupulous practices

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

paraded as optimal outcomes. This has no doubt enhanced the economic status of some individuals and groups. But, all of them have lost the moral bearing that the accomplishments are within the norms of civilized and commonly agreed behaviour. It is here one can find that the erstwhile socialist countries are found to be more upright during the periods of collapse (plunge is drastic subsequently) than the kind of decadence we witness in the liberal societies now. The moral consequence of the recent happenings is so serious that the threats on human survival are imminent.

The naked display of extreme voracity increasingly internalised by some persons and groups is so dreadful that might ultimately annul the distinction between a human and an animal. It is in this context, we may examine how the corporation has been used as tool in this process?

The evolution of Corporation as a business organisation was promoted by the Fabians and Labour party functionaries in Great Britain during the early part of the last century. Economists like A.C Pigou and J .M. Keynes wanted to use Corporation as a tool for successful nationalisation of basic industries in course of gradual transition to a socialist economy. The kind of Public Corporation that they perceived as an institution to avoid political control over public utilities and at the same time should enjoy autonomy to take prudent decisions in the day to day functioning of the business was ideal. Though, England had pioneered the concept in an ideological backdrop, the corporation has emerged differently in diverse economies. Thus, the kind of corporation like BBC in England is different from France, Japan, USA and others.

A corporation is a legal entity with set of objectives to run public utilities in the beginning and has been slowly adopted by the business enterprises. In fact, the Tennessee Valley Authority is an example of legal entity created through a legislative process to operate the irrigation project in the USA. Consider, in this regard, the basic legal characteristics of the business corporation. They are: legal personality, 15

2013

limited liability, transferable shares, delegated management under a board structure, and investor ownership. These characteristics respond to the economic exigencies of the large modern business enterprise. Thus, the Harvard scholars examining the essential elements of corporate law maintained that everywhere must, of necessity, provide for the above 5 features. ‘To be sure, there are other forms of business enterprise that lack one or more of these characteristics. But the remarkable fact—and the fact that we wish to stress—is that, in market economies, almost all large-scale business firms adopt a legal form that possesses all five of the basic characteristics of the business corporation.

Indeed, most small jointly-owned firms adopt this corporate form as well, although sometimes with deviations from one or more of the five basic characteristics to fit their special needs’. In virtually all economically important jurisdictions, there is a basic statute that provides for the formation of firms with all of these characteristics.

As this pattern suggests, these characteristics have strongly complementary qualities for the five core values to reduce costs of conducting business.

The public Corporation or Private Corporation in India was introduced through the Companies Act 1956 and was reintroduced in 2012 with some modifications. The difference between the private limited and public limited is that the former needs 7 members and the latter can be registered with a minimum of 2 and with limited liability. The latest amendment to the Act has provided for one man company/corporation. There are other provisions like voting rights, election of chairman, nomination of auditors etc. But, there is also a provision through which the board can amend the articles and memorandum making the provisions trivial. The interesting part of the functioning of the company or corporation is that it can allot its shares (Art 42) to private party and can call it public offer and allot shares to its directors and employees, read family members. The corporation can buy back its own shares when it grows strong through different means to make it a pure family affair. Thus, the

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

capital marketization through the corporations is one and halftimes that of our GDP or Rs 13541699 lakh crores is under the ruse of few families.

The foremost issue of the corporate world is that we have so far 1289229 registered companies including the suit case companies. Interestingly, only 872957 are in operation and majority of them are in Finance, Banking, Insurance, Real Estate, Service sectors and only 22 per cent are registered as manufacturing firms. Does it convey the anarchy or a native grown pattern in our economic operations that reflect our society?

It is difficult to convince some of our activist scholars that feudal characteristics prevail and sustain in an advanced capitalist system. But, India according to R.S. Sarma and others had feudalism during 300-1200 AD. But he has qualified that his study ‘does not consider its impact on social and cultural life’. There are other scholars, who claim that India had a different kind of Asiatic Mode of Production that does not necessarily correspond to that of European feudal category. However, it is relevant here to understand that feudalism as a form of governance or mode of production is related to land and the fief of a lord. The landlord under the

fiefdom controls everything and exploits the workers and may develop an ideology based on faith or social bond to keep them under his control.

It seems the characteristics of fiefdom sneaked in to our corporate world. This is manifested openly during the last few weeks when BCCI chairman openly accusing his detractors as a bias against the South. A popular weekly has made an observation on a much touted corporation and the promoter as “…missed a tricky by mechanically passing the baton on to each of the founders. The firm effectively closed the door outside talent which could have taken in to the next level of success” (Semi-capitalism 17, June, 2013). There seem to be some kind of a bias against the South from the time of Satyam in the media as the episodes of billions of rupees of scams in other parts of the country are given tepid treatment till they overflow under their gravity and not otherwise.

Thus, all the support structures and the ethos of liberalisation in India did not show any evidence of conflict with the feudal institutions like, fiefdom, caste, Joint-family, guild etc, to apply the corporate Law. This warrants a critical reflection and debate for an enhanced engagement on the situation.

Letter to The Editor: Dear Editor Ms. Rekha Saraswat, It appears Secularism and Rationalism— these two words are just show pieces, words in the dictionary and on the tongue of political leaders only. When you see the reservation process in the Government these two words disappear because if you are from a particular tribe or caste you can get some benefits, not only that, but the selection committee and members of selection committee also concentrate on Race, and Caste for ultimate selection.

When any person writes his Surname generally all people begin to analyze the person by his caste, race, and religion.

So, in India, people watch other people through the looking glass of Caste, Race, and Religion and behave with them accordingly. I hope efforts by hmanist and rational groups like ours would change the socila and cultural picture gradually so that the change is ultimately felt in the political decisions and government policies as well.

Atul K. Raval, Ahmedabad P.S. : Today I also received May 2013 issue of your magazine. Photographs of the seminar are good.

16

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

IRI / IRHA Members' Section:

Jawaharlal Jasthi

[Mr. Jawahar Lal Jasthi has been associated with the Radical Humanist and the Rationalist Movement since his college days. Mr Jasthi has contributed articles in Telugu and English. His unpublished book Oh My God is based on the futile search for God in the annals of science.]

Our Shallow Democracy certainly goes to the credit of the party in Itpower at the center – The Indian National Congress Party – that they have allowed the parliament to pass the Right To Information Act (RTI). Having got it passed, it seems, they are regretting it.

The purpose of the Act is to make the public affairs transparent so that the citizens could know how the various organisations, that have a bearing on their lives, are functioning. Nobody could say that political parties do not have any effect on our lives.

But unless there is some legal provision to make them answerable, they will naturally refuse to answer. In order to escape from this legal responsibility, it is being argued that the RTI Act applies only to public organisations or to organisations that receive substantial aid from government. It is a patently wrong argument. The Act is clear when it states that the information referred to in the Act “includes information about any private party which can be accessed by a public authority under any law in force.” The right 17

2013

includes the right to inspect, take note and to get certified copies in any form.

“Public Authority” includes any authority or institution of self-government established under the constitution, law of Parliament or state legislature and includes non-government organisations financed by government. It is true that the political parties in the country are not financed by the government and are not covered by this clause. But they are the organisations “which can be accessed by a public authority under law.”

The Election Commission is a constitutional body.

It is given right of access to the finances and accounts of each and every political party that is recognized.

Each one of the political parties has to get itself registered with the Election Commission under section 29A of the Representation of Peoples’ Act. Surprisingly, this provision is added into the Act by an amendment in 1989. Till then, from the date of passing the Representation of Peoples Act in 1951, there was no provision under any law to insist that the political party shall be a recognized institution.

It has to be considered to be serious lapse when our democracy is supposed to be based on political parties. There is no mention of political parties even in our constitution until 1985 when the X Schedule is introduced by the 52nd amendment.

There is no mention of political parties even under Art.120 or Art.191 wherein disqualifications for membership of central and state legislatures are enumerated. They are accepted only under freedom of association. As such, political party has no legal sanctity when it was brought into the constitution through the X Schedule. This was rectified by amending the Representation of Peoples Act in 1989, wherein organisations claiming to be political parties are required to get registered with the Election Commission. Formats and processes were announced by the Commission to get the parties registered. Apart from all the organizational and functional requirements to get eligibility to register, the one important condition is that the parties have to get their accounts audited by an

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

auditor on the panel of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. The audited accounts are to be submitted to the Commission within six months from the date of closing the accounts. This provision is analogous to the one applicable to the government companies under the Companies Act. The Commission is not concerned whether the accounts are approved by the members of the party.

But, when the accounts are prescribed for audit, it is absolutely necessary that the accounts are complete and reflect the true picture of the organization and its activities. If not, the auditor cannot accept the accounts. When Mr. Jagdeep Chokkar, one of the founders of the Association of Democratic Reforms applied for information regarding the sources of their funds, every political party considered it an affront and raised a hue and cry.

They started to claim that the parties in India are not funded by government and so are not covered by the RTI Act. The petitioner approached the Central Information Commission and they made a ruling that political parties must disclose the information required by the petitioner. It is a real shock to see that none of the political parties are willing to accept the decision of the Commission and opposed it tooth and nail.

But, there appears to be some opportunity for a different opinion unfortunately. The Commission adopted the principle of ‘substantial funding’ by government so that the parties are deemed to be ‘public authorities’ and so they are covered by the RTI Act. This funding is supposed to be indirect by way of privileges and exemptions under the taxation laws leading to financial advantage to the parties. The main advantage is by making the political parties on par with charitable organization to get exemption from taxation and the contributions by the donors made eligible for exemption from tax. It induces contributors to contribute more and avoid tax. Even the Companies Act is amended to facilitate contributions to political organisations. It is also possible that the parties are provided with land and utilities at concessional rates to political parties, 18

directly or indirectly. The influence that they could wield in administration, even when not in power, is obvious. NCP, one of the major national parties, conceded that the value of such sops and supports to them comes to about 1.4% of their funds. But we do not know the actual amount as we do not know the total of funds. Political activity is a charitable activity for tax purposes – that is how we value our democracy!

But a private organization cannot be considered a public authority just because it receives funds and support from government. It is doubtful whether we can bring the political parties under the purview of RTI Act by virtue of this argument. But they are the organisations that can be accessed by a public authority under a law in force. The Election Commission has the right to access the accounts of the political parties under the Representation of Peoples Act. The rules may provide that names of contributors of amounts less than Rs.20, 000 need not be disclosed. It does not mean that the total amount need not be disclosed. It also implies that all contributors giving more than Rs.20, 000 must be disclosed. We do not know how far this condition is being complied with as the audited accounts are not made public either by the parties or by the Commission. The auditors must be knowing it. So it cannot be claimed that it is a private information to which public has no access.

According to some of the reports of the Election Commission, the Congress party has received a total fund of Rs.1660 crores during the year 2011 – 2012 out of which Rs.330 crores are stated to be from companies. The funds of BSP amounted to Rs.1226 crores whereas that of BJP was Rs.852 crores. CPI (M) is reported to have got Rs.67 crores every year from companies! In view of the lavish visible expenditure incurred by the various parties and the amounts spent by the contesting candidates with support from their parties, it is highly unlikely that the figures reported represent the total funds of the respective parties. That is why the Association of Democratic Reforms felt it necessary to get true information using the rights made available under

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

the RTI Act. We are expecting transparency in functioning of government. When none of the major political parties are willing to disclose source of their funds, it is futile to expect that any law encouraging transparency will be passed in the legislature.

Whatever may be the legal provisions and whatever may be the decisions of Commissions and courts, they are of no consequence when the executive is determined to ignore the same. There

2013

are many judgments also that are not implemented by the government. We flatter ourselves that our constitution has balance between the various branches of the government. When all those branches are in concert, if not collusion, it is not the constitution alone that fails. It is the democracy that eludes us. Our credentials for democracy are very shallow. Let us nor boast that we are the biggest democracy on earth.

Do come forward to become a part of the

Encyclopedia of Radical Humanists To be loaded on the RH Website

http://www.theradicalhumanist.com Dear Friends, This is to request you to send in your personal details, contact numbers etc. (along with your passport size photographs) as well as brief accounts of how you got associated with M.N. Roy/Radical Democratic Party/Radical Humanist Movement directly or indirectly through the philosophy of New Humanism.

This is also a request to all those friends, whose deceased parent/parents were involved in or were sympathetic with Radical Humanism and its Movement, to send in accounts of their parent’s/parents’ association (as much as they can recollect and recount). This will be a loving and emotional tribute to their memories from your side.

All this effort is being made to form an encyclopedia of the Radical Humanists right from the days of the beginning of M.N. Roy’s social and political activities in India and abroad.

All this information will be uploaded and permanently stored on the RH Website in the Profile section for everyone to read and come in contact with one another.

This will be a historical check-list to connect with all the crusaders who worked or are still working for the human cause on the humanist lines.

—Rekha S.

19

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

Ramesh Korde

[Ramesh Korde is a vateran Radical Humanist, 85 years of age, associated with the Radical Humanist and Renaissance movement since 1950. sudheshkorde@yahoo.co.in]

Challenges before Indian Society in India, the human society has to Today combat the pernicious challenges of religious orthodoxy and parochial aggressive nationalism. These twin dragons are spreading an atmosphere, particularly among educated middle class, of the revival of obscurantism and anti-rational faith. This makes the spread of renaissance humanist movement exceedingly difficult if not altogether impossible. This deadly poison if it cannot be totally eradicated, at least, its impact has to be reduced to a substantial level in human affairs, and then only rational, scientific and liberating ideas could be understood and appreciated.

I- Religion: Historically religion was the creation of primitive rationalism to explain natural phenomena.

However, M.N. Roy said that now religious mode of thought has become antiquated and therefore it has to be rejected.

Erich Fromm defined necrophilia tendencies as passionate attraction towards what is dead, decayed, and putrid. For the necrophilous only the past is worthy, important and real not the present or

20

future. What is dead rules the man’s life! For him past is sacred, new is not valuable. Drastic changes are crime against nature.

This is exactly, how the religion mode of thought in India is spreading these necrophilous tendencies among large sections of people in their everyday lives. They worship stone statues of Gods and Goddesses that cannot react, debasing man of flesh and blood. The worst result is that the people have lost self-confidence and self-reliance to improve their intolerable miserable human conditions themselves. Human life has lost its significance.

People live in an imaginary glory of ancient India and that is not conducive to human progress and welfare.

The mission of Radical Humanism is to revolt against these anti-freedom necrophilia tendencies because the object of these tendencies is to subdue the inherent natural curiosity in a human being to know the causes of natural phenomena and the intellectual understanding of these phenomena and not to motivate them.

Feuerbach had observed that in all fields man had progressed. However in religion matter has remained stone-blind and stone-deaf. Religion by promising man’s eternal life has deprived him his temporal life. By teaching him to trust in God’s help, it rejects his trust in his own power; by building faith in a better future life in Heaven, it destroys his motivation to attain a better life on Earth. He further said that religious influence humiliates and degrades humanity and strips it off its dignity in order that Deity may be revealed in magnanimity. Man asserts that God provided whatever he has derives in life.

Moreover religion paralyzes man’s ability to live together in concord, for it diverts the energy of love to divinity and rejects the real fellowship of man towards an imaginary heaven. It depreciates all values of earthly life and makes social equality and harmony impossible.

Bertrand Russell had observed that religion prevents our children from having a rational

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

2013

education, prevents us from removing the fundamental is inaccessible to human reason and intelligence. causes of war and prevents from teaching them the ethics This has an adverse effect on growth of critical of scientific cooperation. thinking faculty and intelligence. Its foundation is

He wished to diminish the authority of religion by increasing the authority of science. Religious mode of thought declares its pronouncement to be absolute, certain and eternally unalterable. The pronouncements of science are made tentatively based on probability and liable to modification.

Religious mode of thought leads to dogmatism, while scientific mode of thought leads to an open society that is conducive to growth of democracy.

Umpteen numbers of times M.N. Roy said that the mission of Radical Humanism is to help people to imbibe and develop in them the scientific mode of thought so that it will lead to growth of a genuine democratic way of life.

Spinoza regarded the scriptures of religion, creations of primitive reason, to be appreciated by civilized men as poetry and not as revealed reason.

An attempt to establish harmony between rational knowledge and revealed reason was futile.

English philosopher late Lock did say that religion had provided power and authority to desperate rulers and oppressive political institutions.

Karl Marx observed that religion is opium that anesthetizes man’s critical faculty and rejects rational approach considering it to be evil.

M.N. Roy had considered irrationalism as the essence of religion and its philosophy which discourages the spirit of rational inquiry and considers the rise of modern scientific knowledge as a revolt against religious beliefs. It has always been the enemy of enlightenment and wants people to be docile so that they become intellectual slaves to dictates of religion that has failed miserably to induce morals in public affairs. He further said that religion is the opium for the people and when religion is used in politics or when politics is debased by religion, it operates as even a stronger drug.

The cardinal principle of all religions is the belief in an omnipotent supernatural force called God. This 21

blind faith. Blind faith and rational enquiry are mutually exclusive.

Under the influence of religion, people are pre-disposed to accept divine or supernatural authority that decides the fate of man on this earth.

This results in developing a mental attitude of submission to any authority on this earth. The outcome is that reason, spirit of enquiry and quest for scientific knowledge are subordinated to faith, and consequently people develop fear of rational thinking which is not conducive to the growth of Renaissance Humanist movement and a democratic way of life.

Religion impresses upon the minds of people that in the real world people are experiencing a vale of tears; it is a kind of third class railway waiting room situation for ongoing travelers towards an imaginary heaven not accessible to human experience. The ill-effect of this is that people lose faith in their own selves and even lose the desire to rebel against the social injustice they suffer from as religion forces them to resign to their fate.

The most obnoxious part of religious teaching is to make virtue of painful and intolerable human living conditions and to promise a better life after death, even though there has been no scientific proof so far of any life after death. Religion has killed the very incentive to improve their excruciating living condition.

Instructive curiosity and exploratory drive are innate qualities of human nature that help to develop intelligence and reasoning faculty. The object of religion is to replace these natural human attributes by faith which is not accessible to human reason. This invariably creates a social atmosphere where conformity to religious cultural pattern becomes the way of life on the part of people and at the same time it generates fear in the minds of those who deviate from this pattern.

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

M.N. Roy had observed that when the mind of man is diverted from the realities of life and focused upon a divine postulate, the postulate is placed behind the veils of mystification leading to obscurity. Religion says that in order to return to the purity of spiritual being, one must flee from the earthly things and seek refuge in renunciation and asceticism.

Further religion uses man as a means to glorify God, a creation of man’s ignorance. It attributes qualities of omnipotence and omniscience to God. However, from the intolerant miserably human condition, it can safely be deduced that he cannot be both at the same time.

Religion tends to paralysis man’s struggle for emancipation and breeds submissive attitude to accept prevailing exploitative and socially unjust system and producing extreme intolerant fanaticism towards those who see life in a different light. The most inimical aspect of religion is that it has divided human race into watertight compartments thereby creating the greatest barriers in unifying the entire human race.

Historical evidence tells us that religion never condemned cruel exploitative ‘Status Quo’. During the earlier period of 19th century in England, children were forced to work ten to sixteen hours a day in factories. Religious men never advocated abolition of child labor or human slavery. From this it can be safely deduced that religious men even today are totally indifferent towards the sufferings of common man.

Biological evolution has been accepted as a fact universally and it has established that life is not the creation of any supernatural being called God. It is evolved from- the inanimate to animate life. During the entire process of evolution, transcended or supernatural authority has not played any role.

Despite this universal truth, in India existence of so called omnipotent and omniscient God is shared by large sections of people but for a few individuals wedded to scientific way of life. The outcome is that religious dogmas have killed the innate

22

curiosity and exploratory drive in man to understand natural phenomena. Due to the blind faith fostered by religious mode of thought, substantially large sections of Indian population are still, in this 21st century, groping in the darkness of medieval age.

Religion, in India, by clinging to unchangeable fixed ideas and rigid patterns has petrified the critical thinking faculty of man. This has obstructed and inhibited the growth of productive intelligence and liberal-creative ideas that could be most conducive to growth of genuine democratic way of life and a better humanism-oriented society.

Even television in India, is not spared by religion. It is being misused and abused by religious people by perpetuating ignorance and blind faith. Religious fundamentalism has acquired an alarming dimension, posing inimical threat to human beings by obstructing the scientific mode of thought to pave the path of a happy and free society.

There is tremendous advancement and progress in science, particularly in the science of biological evolution. But religion in India is very much adamant and is against any change. On the contrary it is clinging, even more, to outdated and antiquated doctrines and values.

Historical usefulness of religion has been completely exhausted, however, in India; it has still retained its dominant effect in cultural and social life of people. The reason is that it has never been subjected to a critical examination and investigation. Urgent need today is, to rationally and critically investigate and examine the doctrines of religion to liberate people from false legends.

Only then will India march towards a modern, liberal and humanist society.

The most obnoxious experience is that religious mode of thought thrived not only among the ignorant, un and ill-educated citizens, religious revivalism is rampant even among the well-educated middle-class and the so-called intellectuals. It is due to their efforts that religious mentality is assiduously cultivated.

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

Indian people have still to receive inspiration from the legendry ‘Adam’ who disobeyed God’s prohibitive doctrine and ate the fruit of knowledge.

This was the first step through which humanity earned its dignity, freedom and happiness.

According to M.N. Roy, to react upon environment is the most fundamental impulse of life. From the automatic, unconscious physical process, the reaction gradually develops into conscious approach with the purpose of understanding. The psychological content of the conscious reaction to environment is the impulse to know. Religion is the most elementary experience of this impulse. The significance of the impulse to know is the desire to find out the causes of observed phenomena. The primitive man finds the causes in imaginary or supernatural agencies. That is the foundation of religion. The essence of religion is belief in supernatural imagination and it is reinforced by the conviction that what has been once imagined really exists, assuming that it is the final and complete knowledge.

The conviction has a pseudo-rationalist basis. Natural phenomena must be caused, they are beyond human control and ergo their cause must be superhuman. Thus, religion becomes a psychological fixation.

Hindu religion is founded on two fundamental pillars. One is transmigration of soul and the second is the law of karma. Natural sciences have exploded both these beliefs. However, in India large sections of people are still living under the spell of this outdated antiquated spiritual and intellectual atmosphere. The outcome is that people have even lost the desire to improve their miserable condition and have resigned themselves to their fate.

In India struggle against religious dogmas and the supernatural is still to begin effectively. It is, at present, in dormant and moribund condition. For this purpose, M.N. Roy founded the Indian Renaissance Institute. One of its objectives was to raise the voice of reason against the outdated fatalistic outlook of blind faith inflicted by religion

23

2013

which has killed people’s desire to acquire scientific knowledge and retarded intellectual progress that has resulted into an intellectually stagnant society. Whatever superficial knowledge of science is available is being misused to reinforce religious dogmas and superstitions. Outstanding humanist philosophers, M.N. Roy and Bertrand Russell in their own ways have said that unless the religion dragon is destroyed, humanity will not progress towards a free and harmonious society and new ideas will never be appreciated. This is the legacy of M.N. Roy left behind and it is the bounden duty of every member of the Indian Renaissance Institute to carry forward this heritage and pave the road to Renaissance Humanist movement that was very much dear to him.

It is incontestably true that once people learn to solve their own problems, religion will fade out on its own. The essence and mission of the philosophy of Radical Humanism evolved by M.N. Roy is to make people self-reliant by motivating their reason lying dormant and moribund in their subconscious mind to solve their own problems and not to depend on supernatural forces which actually cannot react.

This will make religion gradually irrelevant. W will stop depreciating the value of earthly life and will actualize social equality and harmony. A man living in a humanist (human-centered and not superhuman-centered) society will become the master and shaper of his destiny.

However, people cannot be educated in modern scientific principles, unless and until they extricate themselves from the bonds of religious superstitions and social prejudices. If human body does not extricate its waste it will perish.

M.N. Roy had emphatically stated to move towards the comprehensive goal of human freedom and happiness in this very life on earth. The precondition is that the anti-human-freedom atmosphere generated by the religious mode of thought has to be replaced by the scientific mode of thought. This will emancipate man from blind faith in an imaginary God and providential fate. This

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

will make man aware that he is not a marionette worked by the strings of religion or by any other supernatural authority. Further it will induce man to realize that he alone and nobody else is responsible for all good or evil things prevailing on this earth. This will further convince the man that he has the strength and capacity to recreate a better human society having less misery.

It was M.N. Roy who revived the Renaissance movement initiated by Rammohan Roy and others in 19th century in India. M.N. Roy further enriched the movement in the light of new discoveries of science and new human experience with a view of jettisoning outdated antiquated religious dogmas and traditional anti-freedom beliefs and time honored dogmas and suggesting that they would be subjected to regular critical research analysis. This is the pre-condition for the Renaissance Humanist movement which it aims to propagate amongst Indians. This will stimulate the spirit of curiosity and enquiry that will, in turn, overwhelm the religious dogmas and orthodoxy traditions.

Indian people need to inculcate scientific outlook and temper, full recognition of the fundamental human rights of man and women and employment of individual freedom at centre of all forms of organized living to combat the contemporary massive religious revivalism, obscurantism and variety of organized chauvinism which are actively trying to spread and establish their pernicious influence upon the public life. Above observation of M N Roy is very much true in respect to the present social atmosphere prevailing in India.

M.N. Roy further said that so long as progressing minded intellectuals will remain wedded superficially to the antiquated forms of religious thought, it will be more harmful because of its deception, they will simply stultify themselves.

The boldness is required in tearing down the rotten structure of Indian society, in the vicious atmosphere where all incentive to progress is checked; it can be born only out of such spirits that are set free by scientific knowledge.

24

If India wants to move forward, Indians must have courage to break away from outdated religious modes of thought. This will create a free, rational and moral society and will place welfare of the people and intellectual growth of humanity at the centre of social, political and economic order.

The claim of the doctrine of the spiritual superiority of Indian culture disregards the history of Europe up to 16th century; Europe was intensely spiritual and was dominated by religious priests and dogmas. It was rationalism and scientific knowledge that later dispelled the religious-spiritualist doctrine of Europe by adapting the scientific mode of thought that resulted into all round tremendous human progress of Europeans.

Instead of decrying Western Civilization it is high time that Indians should learn lesson from Europe’s Renaissance Humanist movement then only Indians will march towards comprehensive human freedom and free society.

II- Aggressive Nationalism: Nationalism, at one time in past history, might have played a progressive role. However, today it has become a malignant disease. More the people intellectually backward and ignorant, more the emotion of nationalism becomes virulent.

Patriotism and nationalism are not mutually exclusive. They exist as inseparable twins and as a result truth and history are fabricated and victimized.

M.N. Roy had correctly diagnosed that nationalism by its very nature cannot be but totalitarian because it postulates a collective ego in which its constituent ‘the man’ of flesh and blood is of no importance.

Nationalism has never been inspired by socially liberated ideals. Historically it is a political expression of striving of minority to seize political power and man ceases to be a measure of things in a political society based on the cult of nationalism.

To speak grandiloquently of national interest, national honor and national spirit, one can locate

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

behind all those high sounding phrases, a hidden selfish interest of a minority of aspirants drugged by the political religion called nationalism. Nation claims and obtains the effacement of individuals composing the nation.

Of course, there was a time when nationalism was a historic necessity and human progress took place under the banner of nationalism. But in course of time, the aspiration of different nations conflicted with each other and consequence was that nations with their respective conflicting ambitions recurrently plunged the world into periodical wars.

If humanity is allowed to progress, it is bound to transcend national boundaries. Today nationalism draws its inspiration from the past and inevitably stands for revivalism.

To quote Bertrand Russell who said that today nationalism is the chief obstacle to the extension of social cohesion beyond national boundaries. It is therefore a chief force making for extermination of the human race.

Aldous Huxley decries nationalism saying that it leads to moral ruins because it denies universality, denies even the existence of a single God, denies the importance of human beings as human beings and at the same time, it affirms exclusiveness, encourages vanity, pride and self-satisfaction, stimulates hatreds and proclaims the necessity and righteousness of war.

Ravindra Nath Tagore while criticizing nationalism wrote that the day nation becomes all powerful at the cost of a higher social life that day is an evil day for humanity. We must stand up and give a warning to all that this nationalism is an evil and cruel epidemic sweeping over the human world and eating into its moral vitality. Not merely the subjects who are ruled, but, also those who live under the delusion that they free all by sacrificing their everyday freedom and humanity to this fetish nationalism, live incessantly in the dense poisonous atmosphere of worldwide suspicion, greed and panic. He further said that the idea of

25

2013

nationalism is the most powerful anesthetic that man has ever invented.

Historically nationalism was never inspired by a liberating humanistic social purpose.

Consequently, politics degenerated into power politics. Therefore, it can be deduced that national politics is actually power politics. This power politics is nothing but the striving of some to capture state power fraudulently in the name of nation and use it to promote their selfish interests at the cost of freedom and welfare of common people.

These power seekers inspire ignorant people to worship and sacrifice at the altar of a geographical goddess that is an abstract concept which cannot react. Live human beings are being sacrificed at the altar of imaginary geographical deities.

M.N. Roy said that in India power-politics must be replaced by humanistic society oriented politics so that the voice of the whole people can be raised against the will of the minority of power-seekers passed as the will of nation. The historical fact is that in a political society based on nationalism man ceased to be the measure of all things.

A nation is composed of men and women of flesh and blood. But they are being asked to sacrifice themselves at the altar of an abstract ideal making their own lives insignificant. That is why nationalism gradually leads to regimentation, intolerance and vulgarization of human history.

The worst crime of nationalism is that it stimulates fear producing hatred and ferocity towards those belonging to different nations. It is said that fear is the mother of cruelty. By stimulating fear, nationalism breeds war and militarism that ends in cruelty.

Today nationalism in the light of advanced communication technology has become an antiquated cult and ideologically an outdated idea.

There are ample historical examples that aspirations of different nations conflicting with each other make it impossible to develop unity among entire human race. It has invariably been an instrument in the hands of that small minority

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

which has vested interests in power politics and personal aggrandizement. It has never encouraged socially liberated ideals.

Nationalism is primarily dominated by base sentiments of racial animosity. Therefore the unity of entire human race becomes next to impossible.

The United Nations Organization was formed with an objective to mitigate national sovereignty and wished all nations affiliated to UNO willingly to respect and honor this objective. However different nations wedded to parochial, aggressive and unenlightened national ideology created the

greatest obstacle in the success of UNO’s mission of unity of the entire human race, which is the prime need of today.

Therefore the philosophy of Radical Humanism, evolved by M.N. Roy emphatically advocated that in order to go forward and achieve progress and happiness of entire human race, nationalism must transcend national boundaries to stimulate unity of entire human race. That is the need of today. Man must be freed from parochial aggressive nationalist tutelage. Then only he can take up the struggle of temporal freedom forward.

BOOKS BY M.N. ROY published by Renaissance Publishers, Indian Renaissance Institute, Oxford University Press and Others 1. POLITICS POWER AND PARTIES

Rs. 90.00

2. SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

Rs.95.00

3. BEYOND COMMUNISM

Rs.40.00

4. THE HISTORICAL ROLE OF ISLAM

Rs.40.00

5. MEN I MET

Rs.60.00

6. INDIA’S MESSAGE

Rs.100.00

7. MATERIALISM

Rs. 110.00

8. REVOLUTION & COUNTER REVOLUTION IN CHINARs. 250.00 9. REASON, ROMANTICISM AND REVOLUTION

Rs.300.00

10. NEW ORIENTATION

Rs 090.00

11. ISLAAM KI ETIHASIK BHOOMIKA (IN HINDI)

Rs.25.00

12. HAMARA SANSKRITIK DARP (IN HINDI)

Rs.40.00

13. NAV MANAVWAD (IN HINDI)

Rs.90.00

14 .SAMYAWAD KE PAAR (IN HINDI)

Rs.45.00

26

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

Teacher's & Research Scholar's Section:

Ashok K.Chaudhury

Mo Yan: School Dropout to Nobel of the most critically acclaimed, Oneoft-banned and widely pirated of all Chinese writers, Guan Moye, better known as ‘Mo Yan’, a pseudonym meaning “don’t speak” in Chinese, which comes from the warning from his father and mother not to speak his mind while outside because of China’s revolutionary political situation from 1950s when he grew up, is the 2012 Nobel laureate Mo Yan, the first Chinese national and second time a Chinese-born writer after Gao Xingjian who received French citizenship in 1997 and honoured in 2000, and accepted by the Chinese government to win the Nobel for literature. He is the 109th recipient of the award. With the highest literary prize to Mo Yan, the Chinese literature now can proudly claim its place in world literature, which was facing a hangover encounter with the West in the 19th and 20th century.

In his Nobel Lecture on 7th December 2012 at the Swedish Academy, Mo Yan told, “The announcement of my Nobel Prize has led to controversy. At first I thought I was target of the dispute, but over the time I have come to realize that the real target was a person who had nothing to do with me... For a writer, the best way to speak is writing. You will find everything I need to say in my works. Speech is carried off by the wind; the

27

2013

written word can never be obliterated. I would like you to find the patience to read my books. I cannot force you to do that, and even if you do, I don’t expect your opinion of me to change. No writer has yet appeared, anywhere in the world, who is liked by all his readers that are especially true during times like these”. (www.nobelprize.orginobel-prize/literature/lau reates/2012/yan-lecture-en.html) Mo Yan, however, was awarded the Prize for his work “with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary”. He has “a damn unique way of writing. If you read a half a page of his writing you immediately recognize it as him”, admits Peter Englund, the Permanent Secretary, Swedish Academy. He further reiterates, “You can open almost anyone of his books and see it’s very critical about many things to do with Chinese history and also contemporary China. But he’s not a political dissident. I would say he is more a critic of the system, sitting within the system”. Mo Yan, the name stands out amid wave of creativity, has written dozens of novels, novellas and short stories, generally eschewing contemporary issues and instead looking back at China’s tumultuous 20th century in tales often infused with politics and a dark, cynical sense and humour.

His works are, mainly, about quest for identity in terms of relationship, conducted in the context of traditional kinship systems and against backdrop of an increasingly bureaucratized and commercial society. He writes about people at the bottom of the society, and is celebrated for his sensual imagery and lacerating expression. His works are not realistic, rather magical, Rabelaisian, satirical, steeped in blood and obsessed with food in uncomfortable ways. The works highlighted by the Nobel Judges: Red Sorghum (1978). Big Breasts and Wide Hips (2004), The Garlic Ballads (1995), and Frog (2009), laced with social commentary influenced by the social realism, have touched on many of contemporary China’s most sensitive

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

themes, including the Cultural Revolution and the country’s strict family planning policies.

In most of his novels and short stories, Mo Yan paints sprawling, intricate portraits of rural China and its people, its culture, particularly the Gaomi culture. Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, he has created “a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and oral tradition”, this is what the Nobel citation accompanies. Mo Yan writes big, bold, often bawdy novels that are as imaginative as they are sensuous, and also rooted in his social conscience. A major theme of his works is the constancy of human greed and corruption, despite the influence of ideology. He is part of a generation of post-Cultural Revolution writers who began looking through new eyes at Chinese society, particularly in the countryside, realizing that he could portray his family and the people, the villagers he is familiar with. His writing is powerful, visual and broad, dipping into history, fantasy and absurdity and is characterized by the blurring of distinction between the past and present, dead and living, as well as good and bad.

Whatever the subject matter he writes it remains his trade mark. His has a style and voice all his own, and is ‘often’ regarded as a person with the greatest potential to appeal an international audience. In 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, Mo Yan expressed his complex thinking, “A writer should express criticism and indignation at the dark side of the society and the ugliness of human nature, but we should not use one uniform expression. Some may want to shout on the street, but we should tolerate those who hide in their rooms and use literature to voice their opinions”. Well represented in foreign languages around the world, he himself reads foreign authors in translation, and strongly advocates the Chinese authors to read world literature which only can overcome the barriers that separate countries and nations.

28

Mo Yan was born on 5 March 1955 in Gaomi in Shandong province to a family of farmers, in Dalan Township, a place never known to have produced literary talents, and an area of barren land and simple people, where much of his fiction is set. He attended a primary school in his hometown, but was interrupted in the fifth grade during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, a decade of political chaos when many of China’s schools closed down. To escape poverty, he returned to the life of peasant in a farm for years, and then in a factory in 1973 that produced petroleum. After the Cultural Revolution he joined the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1976 and after five years of military life, literature became his passion.

While studying at the PLA Academy of Art from 1984 through 1986, he was given position at the Academy, which he left in 1997 and worked as a newspaper editor. Subsequently, he obtained a Master’s degree in Literature from Beijing Normal University in 1991. The long time Communist Party member, Mo Yan now the Vice Chairman of the Communist Party-backed Writer’s Association, and draws his salary from the Culture Ministry.

He began writing in 1981, while in the army, in the reform and opening up period. Alike many modern Chinese native writers who take their home-town as the chief inspiration for their fiction, Mo Yan’s greatest source of creative inspiration was his own people, who live in his hometown Gaomi. He chooses for his milieu his native village but the place is more fictional than real. His village is extremely robust and individualistic, presumably as a result of the adverse environment and the turbulent age they lived in. Though Falling Rain on a Spring Night (1981) is the first novel of Mo Yan, his popularity was reconfirmed with Howard Goldblatt’s English translation of Red Sorghum: A Novel of China (1993), a novella first published in China entitled Hung Kao-liang Chia-tsu (1986), and later expanded into five-part novel in 1989, an epic that takes on issues like Japanese occupation, bandit cultures, and the harsh conditions of rural China.

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

The novel spans over 40 years in rural Gaomi Township, far removed from late 20th and early 21st century world through flashbacks and foreshadowing, beginning with the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. ‘Sorghum’, used here as food and as an ingredient of a potent wine, has been the focus and metaphor of peasant life during peace time. Mo Yan tells the story of three generations.

Set during the fratricidal barbarity when the Chinese battled both Japanese invaders and each other in a region where sorghum is grown in a particular time and place- a place where red-sorghum, which forms a glittering sea of blood is the traditional spirit of the region. The story begins as a memory, being told by an unseen narrator, of his grandmother. The protagonist, a poor girl who in late 1920s, was sent by her parents into a pre-arranged marriage with a much old man, had leprosy, which represents the corruption of the Guomingdan period. The girl thoughtfully slips a pair of scissors into her blouse before being borne off by sedan chair to meet her husband. As her party makes its way through a field of sorghum, it is attacked by bandits, and her husband dies. But his murder enables the young woman to take over, and calm up the winery, representing China.

Red Sorghum shows peasants who glorified the breaking down of class barriers and a brave struggle against Japanese invaders. The workers revolt against the Japanese, and after their uprising is crushed, the Japanese order to the local people who were skinned alive in front of others. Violence and death are a fact of daily existence in the rural world. Mo Yan, in Red Sorghum, brings us into a world in which people work hard to find the means of survival. Red Sorghum can be read as a parable of China’s development, or as a hymn in praise of the way workers resisted the Japanese invaders.

World War II plays a major role in the book, but Red Sorghum also looks into Chinese culture and family. With the acclaimed novel of love and resistance the government also plans to create a Red Sorghum Culture and Experience Zone in Pingan. Although villagers counter that they have 29

2013

stopped growing the cereal in the l980s, the government reportedly plans to pay local farmers to plant 1,600 acres of profitable crop. Unique among modern Chinese novels, Red Sorghum winds up with evermore incredible and glorious epiphanies in the final chapters. Red Sorghum, the wild, open sorghum field is also the stage on which a modern historical revolutionary romance is carried out.

To quote Jeffery C Kinkley, Professor of History and a founding core faculty member of the Doctor of Arts degree in Modern World History at St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Science, New York, “Red Sorghum will be remembered for its inventiveness, its mythmaking, its heroism and anti-heroism, its violence, its absurdity”. Mo Yan, perhaps, best known in the Western world as his novel Red Sorghum was made into a film, by the same name, based on the first two chapters ‘Red Sorghum’ and ‘Sorghum’, by Zhang Yimou, China’s most celebrated new wave director.

Covering the experiences of three generations of a single Chinese family in Shandong, the film is about survival, individual and communal conflicts, and the impact on individual and social lives by external historical events such as Sino-Japanese War. However, the film won Golden Bear, the highest award of the Berlin International Film Festival in 1998, and after which the novel was sold nearly 50,000 copies according to the publisher Penguin Group (USA).

In his subsequent works: Tiantang Suantai Zhige, 1989 (The Garlic Ballads; 1995); Jiuguo, 1992 (Republic of Wine); Fengru Feitun, 1995 (Big Breasts and Wide Hips); Shengsi Pila, 2006 (Life and Death are wearing me out); Mo Yan embraced various approaches, from myth to realism, from satire to love story. But at base, he is a satirist of animal urges and animal longings: lust for food, lust for sex, and lust for dominion. His tales were always remarked by an impassioned humanism. In The Garlic Ballads, Mo Yan adopts a completely different approach. The novel marks a return to traditional realism and the facts of realism.

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

Brilliantly Mo Yan developed and revived the peasant literature of earlier communist writers.

Based on a true story of when farmers of Gaomi Township rioted against the government that would not buy its corps. The farmers of Paradise Country have been leading hard scrabble life unchanged for generations. The Communist government encouraged them to plant garlic, a crop the region is famous for. Great returns are promised. Instead, a glut of garlic collapses the market and ruins the peasants who demanded compensation from the authorities. The government had encouraged them that marketing co-operatives would buy their harvest for one Yuan a pound- put in cold storage and resell it at profit in the spring. But the surplus on the garlic market ensues, yet the farmers watch in horror as their crops wither and rot in the fields.

The ensuing confrontation culminates in the sacking of the local party headquarters. The fate of the principal characters, coming from three generation, are tragically entwined, and their lives overtaken by the snowballing events. This is the story with a lot of brutality and suffering, but it is told with an ironic touch. The Garlic Ballads is a powerful vision of life under the heel of an inflexible and uncaring government. Through this powerful, fiercely lyrical story of garlic farmer’s 1998 revolt, Mo Yan uncompromisingly portrays the harsh realities of an existence difficult to comprehend. The political story highlights the breakdown in the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the peasants.

With the powerful new voice on the brutal unrest of rural China in late ‘20s and ‘30s, The Garlic Ballads, which eventually circulated in China, Mo Yan emerged as a major writer. He spares no niceties in his vilification of the new China and its rulers. The government banned the novel in China as it portrays a landscape at once strange and compelling; a timeless China violently interrupted.

His other acclaimed works: The Republic of Wine, a satire around gastronomy and alcohol, uses

30

cannibalism as a metaphor for Chinese self-destruction, following Lu Xun; Big Breast and Wide Hips, both for its sexual contents and for its failure to depict class struggle, the controversial novel by some leftist critics, deals with female bodies. With 500,000characters the Big Breast... relates the story of a Chinese peasant woman from the North who raises nine children under the most adverse and difficult circumstances. It begins on the eve of the Sino- Japanese War 11(1937) and ends in ‘90s. The novel deals with all the stormy changes and hardships that transpired during Communist Chinese history. The narrator, Shangguan Jintong, the most unforgettable character, meets a violent death during the War. Critics regarded the book as the portrayal of Communist soldiers as lazy, indiscriminate slaughters, as an endorsement of the Kuomintang’s role in fighting the Anti-Japanese war.

Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (2006), a huge and ambitious work, written in forty-two days, conjures a benevolent landlord who is executed so his land can be redistributed. He is then reincarnated in the form of various animals: as a donkey, an ox, a pig, a dog, and finally a monkey, during the Chinese land reform movement. The landowner experiences, through these bodies, the shame and abuses, and violence of the revolutionary upheavals of China in the 20th century. Life and Death... is somewhat different from other novels as the landlord observes and satirizes communist society. The victim of a public humiliation session during the Cultural Revolution is accused of having impregnated a donkey. The critics praised that the novel covers almost the entire span of China’s revolutionary experience, almost like a documentary of the times, from 1950 to 2000.

His latter works include the collection of eight stories Shifu Yue lai yue mo, 2000 (Shifu, you’ll do anything for a Laugh), and the novels: Tanxiang Xing 2001 (The Sandalwood Death); and Wa (Frog, 2009). Tanxiang Xing, a more ambitious and thought provoking novel, translated in 2013 in

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

English titled The Sandalwood Death, by Howard Goldblatt, with starkly beautiful languages, borrows its form and story from a Maoqiang Opera, otherwise known as Cat Opera, the symbol of Chinese tradition, well known in Northeast Goami Township, his native place. Set during the Boxer Rebellion (1898-1901), it is partly based on actual events with historical figures such as Empress Dowager Cixi and German Plenipotentiary Clemens von Ketteler, a revolt led by farmers and craftsmen against imperial creep of the Qing Dynasty in Northern China that claimed over 100,000 lives. The novel, set against a broad historical canvas told in its first half from several perspectives and in the later portion by an omniscient narrator, centres on the interplay between Sun Meiniang, the female protagonist, a reformer and an interior of the Maoqiang tradition, and three male paternal figures in her life. One of them is Sun Bing, her biological father, an opera singer, and was a leader of the Rebellion. The government captures him and plans to execute him by sandalwood punishment, or crucifixion with some added effects.

Over the course of the novel Sun Meiniang tries her best to save her father’s life, but from the moment her father is arrested, the gandieh becomes mysteriously hard to reach. But she is determined not to let the old man be killed as an example. Her quest to secure his rescue is desperate and heart breaking. The march to his death has a malevolent kind of moment, underscored by the occasional rhymes that nod to the opera origins of the sadistic and horrifying novel. Though the death in England came with one swift blow in the Rebellion period, the punishment is described as ‘Sandalwood Death’. However, The Sandalwood Death, brilliantly, exhibits a range of artistic styles, from stylized arias and poetry to the antiquated idiom of late imperial China to contemporary prose. For the translation of The Sandalwood Death, Goldblatt was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

31

2013

His 2009 novel Wa (Frog), devoted to his 77 years old aunt, set in more contemporary times, tells the tale of a midwife who witnesses the clandestine, sometimes force abortions of daughters by women desperate to have a male heir for their husbands.

The novel has led to many debates at a time when birth control is discussed openly and even becomes more flexible in Sanghai areas. More recently Pow, his first novel to appear in English before it is published in Chinese, translated by Howard Goldblatt too, is a red-toothed fantasia about meat production and meat consumption. Luo Xiaotong, the narrator of Pow, was the most renowned gluttonous boy who recounts his childhood in Slaughterous Village, a hamlet of butchers led by the crude, lascivious Lao Lan. Xiaotong loved meat so much that it sang to him how his frugal mother’s decision to deprive him of it made him crazed with longing. The novel also chronicles the changes in a town that has come under the spell of capitalism as the farmers abandon their fields and became butchers. Meat is artificially inflated with injections of water to increase its weight; formaldehyde is applied to keep it fresh. Finally, the people of the town become literally sick from greed.

While writing fictions, Mo Yan has written a number of essays and other type of prose and collected in one volume in 1993 titled Shenliao (Supernatural Talk). All the stories, powerful in their own right, are terse and forceful, wondrous tales of men, and ghostly tales. Tie Hai (Iron Child), set in the iron-smelting movement during the Great Leap Forward (1958), explores the bizarre tale of two children who eat copper and iron scraps to survive; Ye Yu (Night Fisherman) narrates a fisherman who has a run-in with a voluptuous ghost that has returned from beyond grave; Shen Piao (Divine Debauchery), depicts the spectral mood of Mo Yan, a story of a country gentleman with an insatiable taste for flesh who hires scores of prostitutes to fulfil lust for carnal pleasure. Mo Yan, however, personalizes the social and political changes of China over the past decades in Change,

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

translated by Goldblatt, published by Seagull, London in 2012. The sleek volume is a representative of people’s history on small events and every day people. Mo Yan breathes life into history by describing the effect of larger than life events on the average citizen.

Known as the foremost of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, Mo Yan, whose literary vision brings us into a social, cultural, and political world without making us feel uncomfortable, virtually, won every Chinese literary prize including Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1998), Kiriyama Prize for Big Breasts and Wide Hips (2005), Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize XVII (2006), Man Asian Literary Prize nominee for Big Breasts and Wide Hips (2007), Newman Prize for Life and Death Are

32

Wearing Me Out (2009), Honorary Fellow, Modern Language Association (2010), and Mao Dun Literature Prize for Frog (2011). As a most translated writer of China, several of Mo Yan’s works have been translated into English, mostly by Howard Goldblatt, Professor of East-Asian Languages and Literatures at University of Notre Dame, as well, into Russian, French, German, and many other languages, giving him an audience well beyond the Chinese-speaking world. A week after the Nobel, the government announced plans to spend $110 million to transform the home village of Mo Yan into a ‘Mo Yan Cultural Experience Zone’.

Dr. Ashok K. Choudhury, a literary critic & postdoctoral scholar, is associated with Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi.

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

Book Review Section:

Dipavali Sen

[Ms. Dipavali Sen has been a student of Delhi

School of Economics and Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (Pune). She has taught at Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, and various colleges of Delhi University. She is, at present, teaching at Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce, Delhi University. She is a prolific writer and has written creative pieces and articles for children as well as adults, both in English and Bengali. dipavali@gmail.com]

Becky and Desta [Partha Dasgupta, ECONOMICS A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford University Press, 2007;soft cover, 5.5x3.3 sq. inch; pp178;black&white photographs and diagrams; price Rs 150.]

handy little Apresented.

book but elegantly

Partha Dasgupta is an eminent economist of our times, with impeccable credentials. He is the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of the British Economy, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 2002 was named Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II.

33

2013

The book is part of an OUP series begun in 1995 to provide stimulating and accessible ways to new subjects. The series has been published in more than 25 languages of the world. The authors are all noted experts in subjects such as History, Politics and Sociology.

At the back cover of this particular book we have Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow saying: “Many students and other readers have wanted a readable introduction to economics that is carefully and seriously analytical though not technical, and is yet aware that producing and consuming, buying and selling, are human social activities embedded in other social activities. Well, here it is. Partha Dasgupta explains the logic of economics without losing sight of the texture of economic life.”

Then we have Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, say: “It is a pleasure to have an introduction of this sort – lively, clear and challenging – which recognizes that economics is about actual human beings who live in a world of fragile and fast-depleting natural resources.”

In the Preface, Dasgupta says how this book is an extension of his An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution ( Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1993), but less technical and heavy. He says he offers in this book “an account of the reasoning we economists apply in order to understand the social world around us and then deploy that reasoning to some of the most urgent problems Humanity faces today.” He has done this by shaping his discourse round the lives of two girls whom he calls his “literary grandchildren”. Becky is 10 years old and lives in America’s Midwest. Her father’s annual income is rarely below$ 145,000. Desta, who is also 10 years old, lives in a mud hut in subtropical, southwest Ethiopia. Her parents cannot even read and write. Becky cycles to school. Desta helps her mother in household chores and childcare. There are photographs contrasting Becky’s house with Desta’s, Becky cycling to school and Desta grinding grain with a pestle.

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

This is indeed a sensitive way of driving in economic disparities (gender bias included) that persist in the world. Using Becky and Desta, Dasgupta discusses in the 8 chapters of the book topics such as Macroeconomic history, Trust, Communities, Markets, Science and Technology as institutions, household and firms, Sustainable economic development, Social well-being and democratic government.

There is no Economics without Markets, as most would agree. Markets have been analysed and diagrammatized in most every treatise on the subject; so also in this. But what makes it special is that after the diagram and the analysis of ‘interdependent markets’, ‘monopoly’ and ‘market failure’, there are two photographs juxtaposing a shopping mall in Becky’s world and market in Desta’s world with vegetables spread out on the ground in small heaps (pp 84-85).

One also admires the way Dasgupta has brought in the role of government, especially the sophisticated Voting Paradox of Arrow’s. He demonstrates that there cannot theoretically be an ideal voting rule, but emphasizes that it is not the Arrow Impossibility Theorem that creates “the human losses we see around us” but the fact that human

beings have not yet learned how to live with one another ( p 157).

In the Epilogue, Dasgupta begins as follows: “I have used Becky’s and Desta’s experiences to show you how it can be that the lives of essentially very similar persons can become so different and can remain so different”( p 158). He ends thus: perhaps the best that Becky’s world can do for Desta’s world is to offer financial and technical assistance while the best Desta’s world can do for Becky’s is to alert it to the enormous stresses economic growth there has put on Nature.. “There is, alas, no magic potion for bringing about economic progress in either world” (p 160).

Further Readings are suggested, and then there comes the Index.

An excellent read but yet it filled me with sadness.

Why aren’t there books like this in India, in vernacular and in affordable forms? Neo-literates of all ages, all beginners in the subject, and perhaps even professional economists would benefit. But it needs a lot of positive attitude to think that such books are going be published even if they were written, and purchased if they were published. That is one reason why India remains closer to Desta’s world rather than Becky’s.

Letter to the Editor:

Vodafone Humbled: Compensated Me With Rs.30,000 I purchased two handsets for Rs.6398 in 2008 from Hutchison Max Paging Pvt. Ltd., a Vodafone dealer in Mumbai on which the name of Vodafone was inscribed. There was two years warranty. Many a time they couldn't get connected to the network and were giving lot of trouble. I requested the dealer to replace the handsets which could be operational but they refused. I filed the case in Consumer District Court, Bandra which ordered Vodafone to refund me Rs.6398 with Rs.4000/- as compensation for legal expenses and hardship I suffered. I didn't accept the amount and appealed to the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Maharashtra, Mumbai and argued the case in person on 30th April 2013. Commission passed the order in my favour. Accordingly I received from Vodafone on 22nd May 2013 the cheque of Rs.6398 as the refund of my purchase price and a further cheque of Rs.30,000 as the damages. My advice: fight for your right, never give up.

Bhagvanji Raiyani, Chairman & Managing Trustee, Forum For Fast Justice janhitmanch@gmail.com

34

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

Mudasir Nazar

Worth a Read [Ryan Clarke, Crime-Terror Nexus in South Asia, States, Security and Non-State Actors (Asian Security Studies), London [U.A.]: Routledge, $120.78, PP 232, May 26, 2011] he book Crime-Terror Nexus In South Asia-States, Security And Non-State Actors consisting of 7 chapters spreading over 232 pages, is written by Ryan Clarke, a former PhD of international relations from Cambridge University and now working at national university of Singapore. The book starts with a crucial statement, “Meetings can take place, documents can be signed and both India and Pakistan can engage in confidence balding measures, but if actors such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and D, company cannot effectively be controlled, lack of trust between both states will remain”. These groups are also blurring the line between terrorism and organized crime and this dynamic largely ignored causes critical gap in knowledge which the book tries to address. The book examine the crime terror nexus in south Asia, focusing in particular on the activities of non-state actors that operate out of Pakistan and challenging the conventional Wisdom that the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) and Al-Qaida are Pakistan’s most serious security threats than LeT which had benefitted from decades of state patronage, enjoys relationship with criminal syndicates, and enjoys legitimacy in Pakistan due to its image of frontline against India. Neither al-Qaida nor the TTP have the level of domestic sympathy that approximates LeT.

T

35

2013

While in west distinction is maintained between organized crime and terrorism, profit motive is key motivation for organized crime and terrorism is believed to be a bi-product of extremist ideology, that can be motivated by religion, ethno-nationalism, sociopolitical considerations or opposition to particular policy and thus are viewed as opposite ends of spectrum but in south Asia, such distinction blurs. This is shown by book, exploring the dynamics of the relationship between Pakistan, D. company and Lashkar-e-Taiba and how it affects strategic thought, decision making and security interests in the region and explores the triangular relationships between states, terrorist groups and criminal syndicates in general and in India and Pakistan particular. D. company headed

by Dawood Ibrahim, is a largest criminal syndicate in south Asia, whose networks spawns over globe and has operations in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Africa among others.

D. company controls much of the smuggling activity at key ports like Mumbai and Karachi, consist of members who are willing to attack their own country (India) and have blurred a line between organized crime and terrorist network. In addition to narcotics and weapons trafficking extortion, racketeering, money laundering and contract killings, D. company is accused of permitting Al-Qaida and Pakistan’s ISI to use its smuggling roots’ and it was involved in 1993 Mumbai bombings. The author claims that there are strong connections between LeT and D. Company, a relationship facilitated and nurtured by ISI. This trilateral criminal terror nexus had flourished from Kashmir. Indian misrule such as rigged elections, forced disappearances and other abuses combined with Pakistan’s strategy of indirect proxy warfare has created an environment that has enabled the trilateral nexus between D. company, LeT and Pakistan flourish in Kashmir. Ibrahim’s motivation to maintain his image as the protector of Indian Muslim minority from the repression of Hindu majority led him to become involved in the

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

Kashmir dispute. As long as status quo remains, Kashmir will remain plagued by multiple insurgent groups, criminal gangs, underdevelopment and overall despair. The author claims that “these groups LeT and D. company serves as a source of employment and income generation as their logistical networks require continuous maintenance and diversification”. But such argument is invalidated by a recent research report on LeT by west point military academy USA. The report authored by C. Christine fair et al, claims that LeT does not recruit persons openly, rather fallows closed Ahle-hadit ideology for recruiting its personnel and since Ahle-hadits are meager in Kashmir, which is the reason that LeT has almost remained absent on recruiting Kashmir’s. The book fails to answer such complication of ideology and recruitment.

D. company provides logistical support to LeT in Kashmir by smuggling predominantly Chinese weapons that are likely in the possession of the Pakistani government as Ibrahim already posses the expertise and contacts requires to transport arms into and through India. Further, the sheer size and scale of the weapons that were smuggled into Mumbai by D. Company via the high seas in 1993 demonstrates the syndicate is capable of trafficking enough firepower to fight a Least Intensity Conflict for an extended period of time. The relationship between the two groups is business like, with militant groups being permitted to use the smuggling routes of the syndicates while the criminal groups receive weapons and explosive tanning and are allowed safe passage through militant held territory. Weapons are trafficked into IHK from Lahore, Karachi and the area in and around Muzaffarabad via countries that are familiar with the mountainous geography and charge their own smuggling rates. Despite, D. Company’s involvement with groups like LeT and the afghan Taliban, the syndicates primary goal is financial and profit –focused but is not opposed to also involving itself in terrorist activity. Yet it is not clearly explained that why religious oriented 36

terrorists like LeT or TTP sometimes kill criminals.

For instance in 2012, 14 criminals were publically executed by Militants from Khyber based LashkarTTP cooperative wing. Religiously inspired terrorists sometimes works contrary to than in nexus with criminals and since Lashkar is also religious militant group, it is not clearly explained which thing makes them to compromise their religious ideology.

The central theme is beautifully explained that how crime sustains terror and terror sustains crime. The revenue generated through smuggling and other criminal activities by D. company is used to launch terrorist attacks against India and in turn Ibrahim gets a safe heaven and favorable environment for smuggling in Pakistan. The Photographs of tiger Menon posing with the leaders of Jammu and Kashmir Islamic front at an ISI safe house in Muzafarabad surfaced and served as the first proof of the involvement of mafia money in Kashmir.

LeT continues to receive funding and weapons in Kashmir from D. company.

D. company along with LeT has developed cooperation with Taliban and al-Qaida. Ibrahim was designated as terrorist by the United States for allowing al-Qaida to use his smuggling routes to evacuate fighters from Afghanistan and for cooperating with terrorist groups like LeT. Ibrahim and Chota Shakeel have been accused of meeting Osama bin laden outside Kabul in 1999. The author claims that Al-Qaida is unable to gain any kind of political space in Pakistan because it provides no social services and has chosen a poor partner TTP, which is a disparate organization of 27 local militias that is highly vulnerable to factionalism and lacks ideological commitment and shared objectives. Rather Hafiz Saeed along with the groups which he represents LeT along with D. Company are able to cause the most serious long-term instability in Pakistan. However, given the present situation, the author has miscalculated the influence of al-Qaida on Pakistani militant groups and it is TTP which has created space to rule over all tribal areas. Too much emphasis seems to

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

2013

that in an effort to account for Pakistan’s monetary shortages, Ibrahim and ISI are largely believed to be involved in the drug trade and its involvement in narcotics trafficking is clearly to generate revenue for Pakistani state. However, these vague arguments are not clearly proved by author and ignore identification and function of intelligence agency, complicates differentiation that whether ISI is an intelligence agency or profit making venture for Pakistan. Instead of clearly highlighting links, author mistakenly puts much emphasis on beliefs which shows complete indiscipline of intelligence organization without proper proof.

Throughout book, The author had relied heavily on think tank material like IDSA, which he himself accepts that their research cannot be called objective, yet the extensive use of literature belonged to Think Tanks takes away the academic pursuit and vigour from the book and in many places, it becomes difficult for author to maintain objectivity over critical issues. Despite these minor shortcomings, the book is worth to read and will be of much interest to the students of south Asian studies, war and conflict studies and security studies in general.

[Mudasir Nazar is M.phill scholar of South Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. mnazar00@gmail.com]

be his obsession on LeT. Otherwise TTP also enjoys the same drug smuggling money from afghan opiates.

Ryan maintains that Pakistan’s economy is suffering from serious crisis and domestic political crisis and a stagnant economy have left Pakistan feeling vulnerable to India. Pakistan’s struggle to develop and maintain a legitimate economy as a result of corruption, lack or rule of law, and the image of south Asia as an unstable region has forced Pakistan to look to illegitimate sources of financing. Dawood Ibrahim and D. Company are viewed as important strategic asset for Pakistan’s economy to afloat, in addition to encourage instability in Kashmir and throughout India. By engaging in state sponsored organized criminal activity and working with transnational syndicates such as D. company Pakistan has managed to stave off outright financial collapse and has been able to continue its funding to various insurgencies in the region. D. company earnings also help to supplement Pakistan’s high defense spending and fund LeT. It is also believed that Ibrahim helped Pakistan to fiancé its clandestine procurement of nuclear and missile technology components and also controls the entire Pakistani drug mafia on behalf of ISI and contributes a huge amount of money to ISI officers every year. The author claims

The Radical Humanist Rates Of Advertisement/Insertion Journal Size:18cm x 24cm-Print Area:15cm x 20cm Ordinary

Special

Second Back Cover Rs. 2,500

Rs. 3,000

Rs. 3,000

Rs. 3,500

Last Cover

Ordinary

Special

Third Back Cover

Rs. 2,500

Rs. 3,000

Half Page

Rs. 1,000

Ordinary Page: Full Page

Rs. 2,000

Rs. 2,500

Rs. 600

Quarter page nd

For One Year 2 Back Cover Rs. 20,000 Rs. 30,000 Last Cover

Rs. 25,000

Ordinary Page: Full Page Rs. 15,000

Quarter Page

Rs.6,000

Rs. 1,500

Rs. 900 rd

3 Back Cover

Rs. 20,000

Half Page

Rs. 10,000

Rs. 30,000

Rs. 30,000 Rs. 20,000

Rs. 9,000

37

Rs. 15,000

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

Comments on Vladimir Leon’s Film on M.N. Roy THE COMINTERN BRAHMIN: I A fantastic capturing of the critical period of the world’s first proletarian state, its founding fathers and their tragic doom!

Roy’s effort, caught up in an atmosphere of political machinations, to correct the fall and his own fallout. It does show Roy as a person who had the courage to stand on his own, assert his thinking on the colonial question and question the degeneration in the party.

It was a sorry state of affairs. The footage captures this sorry state with its irrelevance today as shown in the empty corridors of the museums.

In less than 100 years, this momentous period of history has become an insignificant relic.

Thank you for an excellent capture of a person who went through intense internal change and metamorphosis from his experience as an active participant and leader in the International communist movement.

All along he tried to be true to his own spirit and improvised his workings to be in tune with it.

In summary, I would say that Roy cannot be downgraded for his ‘failures’ but must be remembered as a brilliant man who was motivated to work for his country and his countrymen. He carried this work with sincerity and purpose and in the process distinguished himself as a great intellectual, activist, reformer and humanist. The world can do with many M.N. Roy’s.

Brilliant work!

Thank you so much!

The director Vladimir Leon has undertaken a noteworthy task- chronicling Roy’s life. Roy was a charismatic figure who was propelled on the international stage by the turbulent period of the time and who pulled himself to meet the challenge.

Unsuccessfully, but in the process developed his

38

own approach to India’s problems. Unique and deserving serious merit!

The movie is presented extremely well and is captured in the places that actually witnessed the events. It is interesting to see him evolving in Mexico and to see the Mexican party scenario of the time. He will be a great link between the progressive Indian people and the Mexican progressives.

It would have also served well to present some background of Roy prior to his coming to the USA. Thank you for taking up the venture of digging into this ‘unknown’ member of the Commintern and for the lucid and compelling presentation.

I am indebted to Vladimir for an excellently portrayal of the contradictory Roy and the non-contradictory humanist.

Sincerely Javeed Mirza, javeed.mirza@gmail.com II Dear Rekha ji I saw the movie produced by Vladimir Leion. His effort is laudable. Going and doing research, meeting relevant people, gathering needed information is a herculean task. In that aspect Leon is quite successful. The Inte rviews are the life in this movie.

But I am disappointed with the interview with Kris Manjapra. He put more emotion than relevant observation on M.N. Roy. His praise of Roy’s role during early nationalist fight is quite exaggerated.

Jatin was the guru and leader at that time. M.N. Roy was a prominent follower who implemented the schemes. But Kris reversed the role. Much of Kris’s rhetoric is not relevant to the film. That was quite disappointing.

In USA Roy met Lala Lajpat Rai which has some historical significance. That omission is one point.

Roy and Evelyn taught in the International Political School in Moscow where some outstanding leaders like Ho Chi Minh were involved. It would have

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

helped to put proper perspective if that part was brought into it.

The starting and forming of Indian Communist party in exile was a great turning point in Indian Left movement, though communists wantonly suppressed it. They were forced to record it in History of Communist Party in India. That part if added would have certainly brought laurels to Roy’s life history and works.

The relationship of Bose and Roy was not put in proper place. People who are blind admirers of Bose praised him sky high though he was a miserable failure, despite nationalistic jingoism.

Bose was a consistent failure and Roy as a friend advised him which was not followed by Bose. That part also is not mentioned which is a definite lapse.

May be, scholars who interviewed Roy and brought out several things about his role in China like Robert C. North and few others who met him Dehra Dun in the last days had brought out certain things in their publications. Some of them are no more and hence Vladimir could not have interviewed them, perhaps.

The writings of Roy made good impact in the western world. Mention of them might have added value to the movie.

For example, Roy was made Vice Chairman of IHEU in 1952 in Amsterdam. That was a great recognition. A fact which should have been mentioned in the movie!

Apart from these omissions and commissions the movie on the whole is an excellent attempt.

I congratulate Vladimir Leon for this film.

Innaiah Narisetti, innaiah@gmail.com Former Gen. Secretary, IRHA, Former Chairman, CFI,India III Thank you so much Rekha!

Pheroze L. Vincent, pherozev@gmail.com

39

2013

1V Thank you very much for this valuable message!

Gurmeet Singh, gurmeeteditor@gmail.com V This picture is a reminder to us in India that we failed to do enough to remember and respect Roy. The minimum we should do is to erect a life size statue of Roy somewhere in Delhi. It makes somebody to inquire who it is. Otherwise, it becomes a closed circuit flatter which will fade out by next generation.

Jawaharlal Jasthi, jjasthi@yahoo.com VI Hi ma’am I saw the video and it was GREAT :) Please keep on sending such precious treasures.

Megha Gunwant, mghgnwnt@gmail.com VII This interesting (part of the) film might provide an explanation for Roy’s later ideas? I suggested recently that Roy’s Radical Humanism has something in common with anarcho-syndicalism. I had assumed that if he had been influenced the Spanish Civil War would likely have been crucial.

But perhaps an older influence stems from Zapata in Mexico (as well also perhaps from his time in California)? Do his papers ever refer to this?

John Drew, jdrew@waitrose.com And Vladimir Leon wrote: Brilliant Rekha!

Thank you for all your efforts.

Warm regards, Vladimir, vladimirleon@orange.fr

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY 2013

40

THE RADICAL HUMANIST

JULY

2013

SUBSCRIPTION FORM

The Manager, The Radical Humanist C/o Mr. Narottam Vyas (Treasurer) Chamber No. 111, (Near Post Office) Supreme Court of India, Delhi-110001 Dear Sir, I/We wish to be enrolled as subscriber/s for The Radical Humanist for a period of one year/two years/three years/life.

Name...........................................................................................................

Address........................................................................................................

Phone No.....................................................................................................

E-mail.........................................................................................................

Thanking you.

Yours faithfully,

— THE RADICAL HUMANIST SUBSCRIPTION RATES— In SAARC Countries: For one year-Rs. 200.00 For two years-Rs. 350.00 For three years-Rs. 500.00 Life subscription-Rs. 2000.00 (Life subscription is only for individual subscribers and not for institutions.)

Cheques should be in favor of The Radical Humanist. For outstation cheques: Please add Rs. 55.00 to the total. In other Countries: Annual subscription (Air Mail) $ 100.00; GBP 75.00 Note: Direct transfer of subscription amount from abroad may be sent to: SWIFT Code: CNRB0000349, MICR Code: 110015012 in the Current Account Number 0349201821034 at Canara Bank, Maharani Bagh, New Delhi, 1100014, India.

Cheques and money transfer details from abroad may be sent to: Mr. Narottam Vyas (Treasurer), Chamber No. 111, (Near Post Office) Supreme Court of India, New Delhi-110001, Ph. Chamber 91-11-23782836, Res. 91-11-22712434, Mob. 09811944600

Post Office Regd. No. Meerut-146-2012-2014 RNI No. 43049/85 at H.P.O. Meerut Cantt. to be posted on 10th of every month RENAISSANCE PUBLISHERS PRIVATE LIMITED 15, Bankim Chatterjee Street (2nd floor), Kolkata: 700 073, Mobile: 9831261725 NEW FROM RENAISSANCE

By SIBNARAYAN RAY Between Renaissance and Revolution-Selected Essays: Vol. I- H.C.350.00 In Freedom’s Quest: A Study of the Life and Works of M.N. Roy: Vol.Ill H.C.250.00 Against the Current - H.C.350.00

By M.N. ROY Science and Superstition - H.C.125.00 AWAITED OUTSTANDING PUBLICATIONS

By RABINDRANATH TAGORE & M.N. ROY Nationalism - H.C.150.00

By M.N. ROY The Intellectual Roots of Modern Civilization - H.C.150.00 The Russian Revolution - P.B.140.00 The Tragedy of Communism - H.C.180.00 From the Communist Manifesto - P.B.100.00 To Radical Humanism - H.C.140.00 Humanism, Revivalism and the Indian Heritage - P.B. 140.00

By SIVANATH SASTRI A History of The Renaissance in Bengal —Ramtanu Lahiri: Brahman & Reformer H.C.180.00

By SIBNARAYAN RAY Gandhi, Gandhism and Our Times (Edited) - H.C.200.00 The Mask and The Face (Jointly Edited with Marian Maddern) - H.C.200.00 Sane Voices for a Disoriented Generation (Edited) - P.B. 140.00 From the Broken Nest to Visvabharati - P.B.120.00 The Spirit of the Renaissance - P.B.150.00 Ripeness is All - P.B. 125.00

By ELLEN ROY From the Absurdity to Creative Rationalism - P.B. 90.00

By V. M. TARKUNDE Voice of A Great Sentinel - H.C.175.00

By SWARAJ SENGUPTA Reflections - H.C 150.00 Science, Society and Secular Humanism - H.C. 125.00

By DEBALINA BANDOPADHYAY The Woman-Question and Victorian Novel - H.C. 150.00

Published and printed by Mr. N.D. Pancholi on behalf of Indian Renaissance Institute at S-1 Plot 617 Shalimar Garden Extension I, Sahibabad, Ghaziabad-201005 Printed by Nageen Prakashan Pvt. Ltd., W. K. Road, Meerut, 250002 Editor-Dr. Rekha Saraswat, C-8, Defence Colony, Meerut, 250001