Ten years back, back in a very small remote town of Jharkhand, I happened to be a part of an intellectually stimulating discussion. Mamta Banerjee was touted to sweep the Assembly elections and excitement was in the air. Our school had more than a couple of young Bengali teachers and one look at them was enough to guess that they were excited like little kids. In the melee there was one young teacher who stoneyfaced declared that nothing can move the Left and as long as there was Bengal , the Left would be in charge of it, for it was an indestructible wall.
Such strong was his conviction, that I knew that I had to understand what it was based on. And who better than him to educate me on the source of his conviction. So I asked him. Till this day, I have no idea if his answer was that ridiculously simple or that incredulous naive. He said, Bengalis by nature are a very rational race and they will never elect someone who was so totally unsophisticated, crude and intellectually lowly. The Left gave the Bengalis a reason to think , a principle to live by and stimulated their brain sense. Bengalis loved to pride themselves as an intellectual people and hence communism as a philosophy appealed to them, for it differentiated them from the others.
Some of it made sense to me, a lot didn't. Communism, as a ideology was something I had learnt only coupla months back and even then, I could see so many flaws in it. What good is a philosophy, if it seeks to build a society from scratch and then predicts its doom for the welfare of the next one. Not to mention, the communist experiments had failed every where else, and the Bengalis were the only one holding on to its relics. If chanting praises of Marx, denouncing anything that is American or for that matter western as imperialist and painting graffiti declaring that China's premier is our premier or denying the very existence of the 1962 armed conflict with the PLA of the China or brutally putting down anyone who dared oppose the party ideology was all that was to communism, then I failed to see what was so sane or rational about it.
So convinced was that young teacher in the cause, that he gave up his teaching career , joined politics and became a CPM volunteer, the same ones, we hear on some days, killing villagers and on others, getting killed by villagers. Politics in WB must have the crown on being the bloodiest and most gory than perhaps anywhere in India. That election , Mamta came tantalizingly close but couldn't complete the home run and I was left to question myself, what if my teacher had been right?
The next assembly election came and went and the Left was still there as an albatross, unmovable and unshakable. As I understood the principle of communism better and started knowing more and more about life in West Bengal, I was forced to question myself, what good is an ideology if it doesn't help fill stomachs and how long can one go on with hungry families, starving children , unemployed youth and sick old men and yet believe in an ideology that the world has discarded decades back.
And then Prakash Karat happened and from being indifferent to the Left, I began to passionately hate it and everything associated with it. He had the guile to lecture the nation on how we were puppets to the US and all the time seeking more and more incentives for the Chinese, the same Chinese , who never trusted us. He almost felled a government on a nuclear deal, only because one of the partners of the deal was U.S and then engineered a Third Front , who had almost everyone marginalized in Indian politics and not one leader of any repute. He made tall promises but he should have known he wasn't a JayPrakash Narayan and when the Left lost its face in the national elections, had the audacity to face the cameras and say that the entire Politburo is responsible for the fiasco and not him alone, which is shameful because it was Karat's ego that drove a wedge with the congress on the nuclear deal or was behind kicking Mr. Somnath Chatterjee from the party.
And then the D day came, the voters in WB decimated the Left. The ideology couldn't feed them and hence had to go. Brains don't work on empty stomachs. And the same lady, who was once described as uncivilized, crude, unsophisticated and uncouth and irrational , got elected by a landslide margin into the Writers building. I wish I could look at that young teacher in the eye now and ask him why the Bengalis voted with their heart this time, paying no heed to the rational aspects. The indestructible wall, he was singing praises of, met an unstoppable force and got vanquished.
Another wall at another time had signalled the end of communism as an ideology, If only the communists had paid little heed to history.
Such strong was his conviction, that I knew that I had to understand what it was based on. And who better than him to educate me on the source of his conviction. So I asked him. Till this day, I have no idea if his answer was that ridiculously simple or that incredulous naive. He said, Bengalis by nature are a very rational race and they will never elect someone who was so totally unsophisticated, crude and intellectually lowly. The Left gave the Bengalis a reason to think , a principle to live by and stimulated their brain sense. Bengalis loved to pride themselves as an intellectual people and hence communism as a philosophy appealed to them, for it differentiated them from the others.
Some of it made sense to me, a lot didn't. Communism, as a ideology was something I had learnt only coupla months back and even then, I could see so many flaws in it. What good is a philosophy, if it seeks to build a society from scratch and then predicts its doom for the welfare of the next one. Not to mention, the communist experiments had failed every where else, and the Bengalis were the only one holding on to its relics. If chanting praises of Marx, denouncing anything that is American or for that matter western as imperialist and painting graffiti declaring that China's premier is our premier or denying the very existence of the 1962 armed conflict with the PLA of the China or brutally putting down anyone who dared oppose the party ideology was all that was to communism, then I failed to see what was so sane or rational about it.
So convinced was that young teacher in the cause, that he gave up his teaching career , joined politics and became a CPM volunteer, the same ones, we hear on some days, killing villagers and on others, getting killed by villagers. Politics in WB must have the crown on being the bloodiest and most gory than perhaps anywhere in India. That election , Mamta came tantalizingly close but couldn't complete the home run and I was left to question myself, what if my teacher had been right?
The next assembly election came and went and the Left was still there as an albatross, unmovable and unshakable. As I understood the principle of communism better and started knowing more and more about life in West Bengal, I was forced to question myself, what good is an ideology if it doesn't help fill stomachs and how long can one go on with hungry families, starving children , unemployed youth and sick old men and yet believe in an ideology that the world has discarded decades back.
And then Prakash Karat happened and from being indifferent to the Left, I began to passionately hate it and everything associated with it. He had the guile to lecture the nation on how we were puppets to the US and all the time seeking more and more incentives for the Chinese, the same Chinese , who never trusted us. He almost felled a government on a nuclear deal, only because one of the partners of the deal was U.S and then engineered a Third Front , who had almost everyone marginalized in Indian politics and not one leader of any repute. He made tall promises but he should have known he wasn't a JayPrakash Narayan and when the Left lost its face in the national elections, had the audacity to face the cameras and say that the entire Politburo is responsible for the fiasco and not him alone, which is shameful because it was Karat's ego that drove a wedge with the congress on the nuclear deal or was behind kicking Mr. Somnath Chatterjee from the party.
And then the D day came, the voters in WB decimated the Left. The ideology couldn't feed them and hence had to go. Brains don't work on empty stomachs. And the same lady, who was once described as uncivilized, crude, unsophisticated and uncouth and irrational , got elected by a landslide margin into the Writers building. I wish I could look at that young teacher in the eye now and ask him why the Bengalis voted with their heart this time, paying no heed to the rational aspects. The indestructible wall, he was singing praises of, met an unstoppable force and got vanquished.
Another wall at another time had signalled the end of communism as an ideology, If only the communists had paid little heed to history.
2 comments:
Hungry stomachs may still exists with mamta banarjee.
While i'm happy that the left has been voted out, it does seem a bit hollow with banarjee being the winner.
On a different note, I have never lost the irony of a communist party having to contest elections.
too good man!
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