INDIA AFTER NAXALBARI
INDIA AFTER NAXALBARI
Unfinished History
Bernard D’Mello
MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS
New York
Copyright © 2018 by Bernard D’Mello
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available from the publisher
ISBN: 978-158367-706-3 (paper)
ISBN: 978-158367-707-0 (cloth)
MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS, NEW YORK
Typeset in Minion Pro
5 4 3 2 1
Contents
1. Naxalite! “Spring Thunder,” Phase I
3. Unequal Development and Evolution of the Ruling Bloc
4. Naxalite! “Spring Thunder,” Phase II
5. India’s “1989”—“Financial Aristocracy” and Government à Bon Marché
6. “The Near and the Far”—India’s Rotten Liberal-Political Democracy
7. Maoist! “Spring Thunder,” Phase III
8. “Rotten at the Heart”—The “Secular State”
9. “Little Man, What Now?”—In the Wake of Semi-Fascist and Sub-Imperialist Tendencies
10. History, Memory, and Dreams—Reimagining “New Democracy”
Dedicated to the memory of
ANURADHA GHANDY (1954–2008)
She led the struggle for bread and roses, the fight for a richer and fuller life for all
NIRMAL KUMAR CHANDRA (1936–2014)
One of India’s finest radical economists, whose aspirations lay beyond the limits of “acceptable scholarship”
P. A. SEBASTIAN (1938–2015)
Indefatigable lawyer–crusader for democratic rights, pioneer of Russell Tribunals in India
Acknowledgments
As I write these words of gratitude, I am filled with sadness upon hearing about the passing away of comrade Vikas (Arvind was his other alias), a politburo member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). In the mid-1980s, as a journalist associated with the Kolkata-based radical-left weekly, Frontier, on a visit to the countryside of the district of Gaya in the State of Bihar, I first met Vikas, who was then a prominent leader of the Mazdoor Kisan Sangram Samiti (worker–peasant militant struggle association), and the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) (Party Unity), one of the predecessors of the CPI (Maoist). Vikas related to the poor and landless peasants in an utterly egalitarian and democratic manner; he seemed to have earned their affection, loyalty, and respect by his deeds.
On this trip, when I was leaving a village on my way to the next one, an elderly man under the care of his grandson insisted on accompanying us (me, a Frontier companion, and our local guide) right to the outskirts of his village. When the time came to say our goodbyes and Lal Salaams (Red Salutes), I told him that he should not have taken all this effort to come so far with us. To which he replied: “You have come all the way from Kolkata to learn about us, our lives, our struggles, and our concerns. You care about us.”
I never forgot Vikas or what this peasant-comrade told me, and was inspired, much later, when I felt adequately intellectually equipped, to write the essay “What Is Maoism?.” And now, I’ve penned this book. Hundreds of millions of people have been the victims of Indian capitalism’s irrationality, brutality, and inhumanity, and it is the actions of those who could not remain unmoved and were compelled to revolt that have motivated me to write this book. But as I write these words of a sense of obligation, I record with sorrow the death of Ashok Mitra, my favorite columnist, whose weekly columns, taken together, constitute what I have called a Guernica of political prose, so full of life, of anger and indignation, as well as empathy and compassion. He had given me some sound advice on finishing what I had begun, this book, and looked forward to the end product, but now he’s no more.
The New York-based independent socialist magazine, Monthly Review has, over the years, been an essential part of my education, and it’s wonderful that Monthly Review Press is publishing this book. The Marxist intellectual “underworld” in India has proved to be one of the best circles for my political education—Samar Sen, Timir Basu, P. A. Sebastian, Sumanta Banerjee, C. V. Subba Rao, K. Balagopal, Tilak Dasgupta, Ajit Roy, Sudesh Vaid, Gautam Navlakha, and Rajani X. Desai come to mind at first thought. Besides the ones I mention, there have also been left-party activists, feminists, ecologists, Dalits, oppressed nationalists, democratic rights’ campaigners, and pacifists, from whose insights, probing questions, and criticism I have learned a great deal. I was very fond of my thesis supervisor, the radical economist Nirmal Kumar Chandra, who later became a good friend and encouraged me on the unconventional path I took, which has eventually led to this book. And, I cannot forget my first editor, Samar Sen (Shômor babu), founder-editor of Frontier, celebrated post-Tagorean Bengali poet, who encouraged me to widen my intellectual repertoire.
Initial versions of what became chapters 6 and 9 first appeared in the Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), whose then editor C. Rammanohar Reddy’s comments and suggestions helped improve both form and content. The preliminary text of chapter 9 was in the form of notes that I had prepared for a Sheikh Abdul Rawoof memorial lecture I delivered at Thrissur (in Kerala) in March 2014. I presented an embryonic version of chapter 8 at a seminar organized by the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights in Nagpur, and in a lecture organized by students of the Radical Study Circle, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, both in 2015. Parts of chapter 10 were presented