SOCIAL BANDITRY

This is the second time I have come across the words mentioned in the above caption. First time , another time, another article where Comintern’s ( third communist international) intervention preceding the dangerous days of Long March of Chinese Eighth Route Army was diccussed. A commission consisting of Borodin and M. N. Roy was sent to China. The activities of Chinese guerillas drew this comment Social Banditry from them. This time we are reading Ramchandra Guha’s Social Banditry in the Telegraph dated December 21st. This time Guha’s source authority is E.J.Hobsbawm. Thus the words appear to be pretty ancient. Mr. Guha’s erudition, excellent grip over narrative writing is admirable. But the experience and realization of veteran foot soldiers like us of what you may call revolution is pretty different.

Incidentally, curiosity urged me to look for some information about M.N.Roy. There are some small write ups and some booklets. There is one biography written by one Samaren Roy There are many exciting information about M.N.Roy .During my boyhood days as a school boy I occasionally noticed in Kolkata some wall posters by Radical Democratic Party. Not much activity otherwise was felt. As I grew up I became prejudiced against M.N.Roy. Our main grouse was Roy was against Lenin, mainly his Colonial Thesis. Although he visited China as a member of the commission sent by Comintern it was never very clear organizationally with which country’s communist party he was involved. He spent a fairly large part of life working along with the communists of Mexico. Also he paid long visits to other Latin American countries, the U S A, Paris , Japan, a few South East Asian countries. But I must admit that I did have a lingering curiosity about the man who could stand up to Lenin and dispute his colonial thesis, or be a party in describing Chinese guerilla warfare as social banditry. When Lala Lajpat Ray was in the U S A M.N. Roy was quite friendly with him. Lala even helped Roy with money, in terms of those days a lot of money.

Anyway, in going into a partial profile of M.N.Roy we do not want to digress from our main concern the precise purpose of describing extreme militant peasant movements as social banditry. A European author in his contemporary ambience may consider peasant uprisings as banditry but we beg to differ . The armed rebellion of Telengana peasants against the oppression of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the tebhaga movement of share croppers of Bengal or the tanka movement of the peasants of Mymensingh district bordering the Garo hills and all other militant peasant movements even in the heyday of past feudal domination is a feature though replete with bloody conflicts, killings, plunder etc. cannot be termed as banditry. It is only when forces not belonging to mainstream peasantry in the name of most modern world outlook of Marxism try perversely to hijack these struggles to seize state power the question of resisting or accepting it arises. In fact this could not only be termed as banditry it can be described as loathsome large scale deception.

In this context in India nearly half a dozen communist parties in the name of Mao, Naxalbari etc. are exactly engaged in such an activity. Extreme right wing politics and the extreme left wing politics as described earlier together in reality contribute to one and the same thing: disruption of real revolutionary process among the masses, stalling the process of spread of revolutionary consciousness among the masses. It is a fact that working class or peasants by themselves cannot generate within them the ideas of social transformation. For this they have to acquire the correct historical perspective. This of course is provided to them by educated classes, thinkers, intellectuals etc. In this way the educated intellectuals. become natural associates of the forces of social transformation. On the other hand sections of these educated classes are heavily utilized by the ruling elite to disrupt Sthe toiling masses from getting attracted to revolutionary ideas . A vast force of artists, illustrators, writers, authors,pseudo scientists, economists etc. are mobilized to bend the masses to the ideas of statusquo. Another thing. With the tremendous rise in productive forces aided by technical progress a large section of people of people engaged in industrial and business processes are really living quite comfortably and are definitely fostering the idea of not getting embroiled into “dangerous” activities of social transformation. The attitude is" why buy trouble?" It is only when the devastating cyclical crisis lead to a catastrophic disruption of various hunky dory of ambition of sections of upwardly mobile classes upsets set in and rethinking and an honest analysis of history surface.

There is no shortcut or made easy to a revolution. I w as rummaging through some dicoloured old letters of Mani Singha. In one of them written from jail, where he was kept for awhile after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, he wrote there is a mighty important factor ruling the space between sowing and harvesting . That important factor is a blend of patience and fortitude. We have to go by the rules.







SOCIAL BANDITRY

This is the second time I have come across the words mentioned in the above caption. First time , another time, another article where Comintern’s ( third communist international) intervention preceding the dangerous days of Long March of Chinese Eighth Route Army was diccussed. A commission consisting of Borodin and M. N. Roy was sent to China. The activities of Chinese guerillas drew this comment Social Banditry from them. This time we are reading Ramchandra Guha’s Social Banditry in the Telegraph dated December 21st. This time Guha’s source authority is E.J.Hobsbawm. Thus the words appear to be pretty ancient. Mr. Guha’s erudition, excellent grip over narrative writing is admirable. But the experience and realization of veteran foot soldiers like us of what you may call revolution is pretty different.

Incidentally, curiosity urged me to look for some information about M.N.Roy. There are some small write ups and some booklets. There is one biography written by one Samaren Roy There are many exciting information about M.N.Roy .During my boyhood days as a school boy I occasionally noticed in Kolkata some wall posters by Radical Democratic Party. Not much activity otherwise was felt. As I grew up I became prejudiced against M.N.Roy. Our main grouse was Roy was against Lenin, mainly his Colonial Thesis. Although he visited China as a member of the commission sent by Comintern it was never very clear organizationally with which country’s communist party he was involved. He spent a fairly large part of life working along with the communists of Mexico. Also he paid long visits to other Latin American countries, the U S A, Paris , Japan, a few South East Asian countries. But I must admit that I did have a lingering curiosity about the man who could stand up to Lenin and dispute his colonial thesis, or be a party in describing Chinese guerilla warfare as social banditry. When Lala Lajpat Ray was in the U S A M.N. Roy was quite friendly with him. Lala even helped Roy with money, in terms of those days a lot of money.

Anyway, in going into a partial profile of M.N.Roy we do not want to digress from our main concern the precise purpose of describing extreme militant peasant movements as social banditry. A European author in his contemporary ambience may consider peasant uprisings as banditry but we beg to differ . The armed rebellion of Telengana peasants against the oppression of the Nizam of Hyderabad, the tebhaga movement of share croppers of Bengal or the tanka movement of the peasants of Mymensingh district bordering the Garo hills and all other militant peasant movements even in the heyday of past feudal domination is a feature though replete with bloody conflicts, killings, plunder etc. cannot be termed as banditry. It is only when forces not belonging to mainstream peasantry in the name of most modern world outlook of Marxism try perversely to hijack these struggles to seize state power the question of resisting or accepting it arises. In fact this could not only be termed as banditry it can be described as loathsome large scale deception.

In this context in India nearly half a dozen communist parties in the name of Mao, Naxalbari etc. are exactly engaged in such an activity. Extreme right wing politics and the extreme left wing politics as described earlier together in reality contribute to one and the same thing: disruption of real revolutionary process among the masses, stalling the process of spread of revolutionary consciousness among the masses. It is a fact that working class or peasants by themselves cannot generate within them the ideas of social transformation. For this they have to acquire the correct historical perspective. This of course is provided to them by educated classes, thinkers, intellectuals etc. In this way the educated intellectuals. become natural associates of the forces of social transformation. On the other hand sections of these educated classes are heavily utilized by the ruling elite to disrupt Sthe toiling masses from getting attracted to revolutionary ideas . A vast force of artists, illustrators, writers, authors,pseudo scientists, economists etc. are mobilized to bend the masses to the ideas of statusquo. Another thing. With the tremendous rise in productive forces aided by technical progress a large section of people of people engaged in industrial and business processes are really living quite comfortably and are definitely fostering the idea of not getting embroiled into “dangerous” activities of social transformation. The attitude is why buy trouble? It is only when the devastating cyclical crisis lead to a catastrophic disruption of various hunky dory of ambition of sections of upwardly mobile classes.

There is no shortcut or made easy to a revolution. I w as rummaging through some dicoloured old letters of Mani Singha. In one of them written from jail, where he was kept for awhile after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, he wrote there is a mighty important factor ruling the space between sowing and harvesting . That important factor is a blend of patience and fortitude. We have to go by the rules.

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

Death of a Salesman: Arthur Miller. First published 1949.

I never liked the name Janaiker Mrityu (Death of Someone) given to the Bengali version of the play. A salesman in a capitalist society is not just someone. He is a unique entity encompassing a unique set of virtues and vices not to be found in earlier economies. For my own purpose I quote from the play:

Willy- Figure it out. Work of a lifetime to payoff a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.

Linda-Well, dear, life is a casting off. It’s always that way.

Linda spoke like that, okay. World over, on the contrary, all the countless Lindas think differently. They want to have houses of their own. It is instinctive since they themselves are houses. Their bodies are houses to bear, feed, and nurture the embryos of generations of mankind. Linda was only consoling Willy Loman over the inevitability of break up of a family, over leaving a house to nobody. Obviously, Linda could not mean it sincerely. And that is only natural. This Death of a Salesman, as I progress afresh for umpteenth time I am stunned by the overwhelming depth of Arthur Miller notwithstanding the canards and gossips crafted over the media. The theme is lasting for sixty years with clear signals of lasting for a century unless not “existing” socialism but real socialism starts controlling productive forces and the economy. The play, for once, strives to bring an individual out of stereotype when and where Charley says one must have something to sell otherwise you are destined for the black hole.

It is astonishing and amusing also to view us in the mirror. With what a tremendous load of illusion we continue to live and suffer only to see us dramatized and look at each other and realize that the fellow beside me is also similarly suffering and hoping and waiting for a morning with a flood of sunshine.

And the pride, arrogance and their futility when viewed in the context of relationship between parents and offspring overpowers us with such sadness. Father figure is a miniature hero and he is worshipped forgetting that the heroes too have feet of clay. Loman is continually failing and boasting and getting beaten and ending up in ridiculous womanizing in full view of his elder son Biff. When the wreckage of this son rebels in frustration he threatens him despairingly. Really, quite moving and relevant till today.