tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62135702024-02-19T20:50:28.363+05:30Anti MNC ForumSamajwadi Janparishad is a political party registered with Election Commission of India.It has units in 10 states of India.It believes in Gandhian Socialism. Nisha Shiurkar is the National President of the party. Lingaraj Azad is its All India General Secretary.The party believes that Globalisation is a counter-revolution and hence opposes it.अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.comBlogger180125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-47485264211971630572023-10-24T08:27:00.000+05:302023-10-24T08:27:28.449+05:30Newsclick fir and farmers' movement*Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM)*
Revised Press Note released in the Press Conference held at Press Club, New Delhi on 20th October 2023.
*Hail the Glorious, Patriotic Mobilization of Farmers by Samyukta Kisan Morcha*
*Stop Spreading Canards Against Farmers’ Movement*
*Withdraw False FIR Against Newsclick Accusing Farmers Movement as anti-national, funded by foreign and terrorist forces-*
*Oppose Fabricated FIR Against Journalists and Demand Their Immediate Release-*
*1st to 5th November 2023 Village Level Campaign Against False FIR and Modi Government’s Pro Corporate Policies*
*6th November 2023 Call for All India Protest Day – Burn Copies of False FIR*
*SKM to campaign in five poll-going states with slogan “Oppose Corporate, Punish BJP, Save Country”*
*72 Hour Day and Night Sit-In struggle before all the Raj Bhawans in state capitals on* *26th- 28th November 2023.*
The National Meeting of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha held today at New Delhi has expressed anger against the Narendra Modi led RSS-BJP government that had made baseless, dishonest and false allegations in the Newsclick FIR against the historic farmers’ struggle. The FIR accused the farmers’ movement as anti-national, funded by foreign and terrorist forces.
Farmers’ movement was a committed, patriotic movement, drawing parallels with 1857 and the freedom movement against foreign loot. It correctly read the nefarious plan of 3 farm laws to withdraw govt support from agriculture and hand over farming, mandis and food distribution to Corporations led by Adani, Ambani, Tatas, Cargill, Pepsi, Walmart, Bayer, Amazon and others.
The 3 farm laws were thrust on the country, the contract law legally bound farmers to grow what the Corporate would buy, would be contracted to purchase costly inputs (seeds, fertilizers, insecticides, fuel, irrigation, technology, services) and sell their crop to the company. The Mandi Act forbade Govt operation, Govt procurement and Price fixation (MSP) to allow a nexus of big companies to dominate crop trade at the lowest price with online networking and Private Silos. The Essential Commodities Amendment Act allowed freedom to hoarders and black marketeers.
The farmers of India read through this subterfuge. They exposed the RSS-BJP – Corporate plan of depriving the people of India of food security, pauperising the farmers, of changing cropping pattern to suit Corporations and allowing free penetration of MNCs into India’s food processing market. They rose as one, rose as a wave in a turbulent ocean, surrounded Delhi and forced the stubborn Modi govt to relent.
In the process the farmers braved water cannons, teargas shelling, road blocks with huge containers, deep road cuts, lathi charge, cold and hot weather. Over 13 months they sacrificed 732 martyrs. They lent voice to the most helpless and deprived sections of India as well as to the voice for justice in media and courts. This was a patriotic movement of the highest quality in the face of repression by a fascist govt serving interests of Imperialist exploiters.
Indian farmers feed 1.4 billion people. They provide subsistence and work to 68.6% population. Govt investment in agriculture infrastructure, promotion of profitable farming, development of the life of village poor and facilitation and securing of modern food processing, marketing and consumer network under the collective ownership and control of peasant-worker cooperatives will bring revolutionary change in peoples’ economy. It will make India as well as people of India rich.
However, in service of corporate and MNCs, Modi govt has launched another attack on farmers. It has used an undemocratic law, the UAPA, which allows the Govt to charge citizens of being terrorists, hence obviously anti national, without having to prove that charge for decades, as even bail is denied.
They have used UAPA to charge Newsclick media house which wrote to support the farmers movement. Newsclick only did the duty that a true media should be doing- to report the truth, report the problems of the farmers and about the united struggle. The BJP Government is using the farcical FIR to spread a canard that the farmers’ movement was anti-people, anti-national and backed by terrorist funding routed through Newsclick. This is factually wrong and mischievously inserted to portray the movement in bad light and seeking to extract revenge for the humiliating defeat they suffered at the hands of the farmers of our country.
Modi govt, after having withdrawn the 3 black acts, is moving again now to falsely charge farmers movement of being foreign funded and sponsored by terrorist forces! All this while RSS and BJP is promoting FDI, Foreign MNCs, big corporations into agriculture! They are deeply committed to condemn and ruin Indian farmers. SKM remains committed to saving farmers’ economy, preventing foreign loot and rejuvenating village economy to build a strong India.
The SKM General body held at New Delhi express its deep anguish and protest and warn the Modi Government to immediately withdraw the false Newsclick FIR and demand immediate release of the journalists Prabir Purkayastha and Amit Chakraborty.
SKM will organise village level campaign against false FIR and Modi Govt from 1st to 5th November 2023. Leaflets explaining the motive of the FIR and to rally the farmers to prevent the Modi Govt from throttling farmers’ economy to help corporate and MNCs will be distributed through door to door visit in the villages.
6th November 2023 will be observed as All India Protest Day and copies of the false FIR will be burnt at the Tehsil and district headquarters.
SKM also decided to campaign in the five poll bound states with the slogans- “Oppose Corporate, Punish BJP, Save Country”
The 72 Hour Day Night Sit-In struggle before all the Raj Bhawan at state capitals on 26th- 28th November 2023 will be organised with massive participation of farmers and workers also will join this struggle across the country under the banner of platform of central trade unions.
*Media Cell | Samyukta Kisan Morcha*
Contact: samyuktkisanmorcha@gmail.com
9447125209, 9830052766अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-88773035038127334432023-10-18T10:32:00.000+05:302023-10-18T10:32:23.060+05:30Guru ka Bagh Satyagraha/ C.F. Andrews<div><br></div><div>It was a sight which I never wish to see again, a sight incredible to an Englishman. There were four Akali Sikhs with black turbans facing a band of about two dozen policemen, including two English officers. They had walked slowly up to the line of police just before I had arrived and they were standing silently in front of them at about a yard’s distance. They were perfectly still and did not move further forward. Their hands were placed together in prayer and it was clear that they were praying. Then, without the slightest provocation on their part, an Englishman lunged forward the head of his lathi [staff] which was bound with brass. He lunged it forward in such a way that his fist which held the staff struck the Akali Sikhs, who were praying, just at the collar bone with great force.</div><div><br></div><div>It looked the most cowardly blow as I saw it struck and I had the greatest difficulty in keeping myself under control... The blow which I saw was sufficient to throw the Akali Sikh and send him to the ground. He rolled over and slowly got up and at once faced the same punishment again. Time after time, one of the four who had gone forward was laid prostrate by repeated blows, now from English officers and now from the police who were under their control.... The brutality and inhumanity of the whole scene was indescribably increased by the fact that the men who were praying to God had already taken a vow that they would remain silent and peaceful in word and deed. The Akali Sikhs who had taken this vow, both at the Golden Temple and before starting and also at the shrine of Guru-ka-Bagh were...largely from the army. They had served in many campaigns in Flanders, in France, in Mesopotamia and in East Africa. Some of them at the risk of their own safety must have saved the lives of Englishmen who had been wounded. Now they were falling to the ground at the hands of the English officials serving in the same government which they themselves had served. ...I saw no act, or look of defiance. It was a true martyrdom, a true act of faith...</div><div>There has been something far greater in this event than a mere dispute about land and property. It has gone far beyond the technical questions of legal possession or distraint. A new heroism, learnt through suffering, has arisen in the land. A new lesson in moral warfare has been taught to the world.... It reminded me of the shadow of the Cross.</div><div><br></div><div>....It was very rarely that I witnessed any Akali Singh, who went forward to suffer, flinch from a blow when it was struck. Apart from the instinctive and slight shrinking back, there was nothing, so far as I can remember, that could be called a deliberate avoidance of the blows struck. The blows were received one by one without resistance and without a sign of fear. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div></div><div>... A new heroism, learnt through suffering, has arisen in the land. A new lesson in moral warfare has been taught to the world... It was very rarely that I witnessed any Akali Sikh, who went forward to suffer, flinch from a blow when it was struck. Apart from the instinctive and involuntary reaction of the muscles that has the appearance of a slight shrinking back, there was nothing, so far as I can remember that could be called a deliberate avoidance of the blow struck. The blows were received one by one without resistance and without a sign of fear."</div><div><br></div><div>Andrews, C.F., Manchester Guardian, February 15 and February 24, 1924.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div><br></div>अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-88411335017515453602023-05-19T17:17:00.000+05:302023-05-19T17:17:29.047+05:30Hooliganism in Karnataka : Gandhiji[ The correspondent had referred to a charity<br />show for Indians organized in Dharwad by a sympathetic(to non-cooperation movement) European lady. The original<br />idea of a play by Indian schoolgirls had been changed at the guardians' instance into a<br />programme of singing and recitations. During and after the entertainment a mob of<br />young men, instigated, the correspondent alleged, by non-co-operationists, had<br />stoned the organizers and guests. Source : Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi ]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: times new roman;">HOOLIGANISM</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >The columns of Young India are open to all who have any<br />grievance against non-co-operators. ‘One who knows’ has sent to the<br />Editor a letter which I gladly publish. He has in a covering letter<br />giving his name pleaded for the publication of his letter. Such<br />pleading was unnecessary in connection with a matter of public<br />importance. If the facts related by the correspondent are true, they<br />reflect no credit on the young men of Dharwad. The correspondent<br />has connected the incident with non-co-operation. It is the fashion<br />nowadays to connect every incident of indecent behaviour with<br /><br />non-co-operation. I wish that the incident had been brought to my<br />notice when I was at Dharwad. I would then have been able to,<br />investigate the matter and deal with it then. I may state that stones were<br />thrown at a meeting of Dharwad students that was held by me in the<br />open. One boy narrowly escaped being seriously hurt. And it was a<br />pleasure to watch the audience remaining unmoved in spite of the<br />stone-throwing. I was told too that stone-throwing at meetings was not<br />an unusual occurrence at Dharwad in connection with the<br />non-Brahmin movement. I state this fact only to show that Dharwad<br />enjoys the unenviable reputation for stone-throwing in a special<br />manner. I must therefore decline to connect the incident either with<br />non-co-operation or with any anti-European movement. Though the<br />correspondent’s letter is obscure on the point, it is evident from what<br />he says that resentment was felt at the idea of girls taking part in a<br />drama. The correspondent says that the drama was dropped “in the<br />nick of time at the desire of the guardians”. There must have been<br />persistence to provoke resentment.<br />But my position is clear. No amount of provocation could<br />possibly justify the hooliganism of the “mob of young men’. They<br />had no right to prevent the performance that was at last determined<br />upon, if the guardians of the girls did not mind it. The truest test of<br />democracy is in the ability of anyone to act as he likes, so long as he<br />does not injure the life or property of anyone else. It is impossible to<br />control public morals by hooliganism. Public opinion alone can keep<br />a society pure and healthy. If the young men of Dharwad did not like<br />a public exhibition of Dharwad girls on the stage, they should have<br />held public meetings and otherwise enlisted public opinion in their<br />favour. The movement of non-co-operation is intended to check all<br />such abuses. Non-co-operationists are undoubtedly expected, not only<br />to refrain from taking part in such violent scenes as are represented to<br />have taken place at Dharwad, but they are expected also to prevent<br />them on the part of others. The success of non-co-operation depends<br />upon the ability of non-co-operationists to control all forces of<br />violence. All may not take part in the programme of self-sacrifice but<br />all must recognize the necessity of non-violence in word and deed.<br />I am surprised that the correspondent in his covering letter<br />speaks of the hooliganism at Dharwad in the same breath as the<br />massacre of Jallianwala Bagh. He loses all sense of proportion when<br />he compares the cold-blooded and calculated butchery of innocent<br />men, who had given no provocation, with the undisciplined and<br />thoughtless demonstration of a “mob of young men”, who were<br /><br />labouring under a fancied or real wrong. Both acts are worthy of<br />condemnation. But there is as much difference between the<br />programme of the Dharwad boys and the Dyerism at Amritsar as there<br />is between an attempt at simple hurt and a completed murder.<br />Young India, 1-12-1920<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gandhiji.</span></span>अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-61229750668378231472020-12-21T17:17:00.001+05:302020-12-21T17:17:18.945+05:30AIFRTE condemns central government’s move to dispense with SC/ST quota in faculty appointments in the IITs<div>Subject: AIFRTE condemns central government’s move to dispense with SC/ST quota in faculty appointments in the IITs.</div><div><br></div><div>"AIFRTE condemns the central government's blatant and unconstitutional instruction to the IIT to dispense with SC/ST quota in faculty appointments. We had cautioned that NEP 2020 with its promotion of so-called 'merit' and no mention of the reservation policy was headed in this direction. We demand immediate withdrawal of the instruction by the government. Reservation policy is a core basis of the principle of social justice and government must publicly re-affirm that it stands by this policy and will fully and sincerely implement it."</div><div><br></div><div>With thanks and regards,</div><div><br></div><div>Prof. Jagmohan Singh Dr. Vikas Gupta</div><div><br></div><div>(Chairperson, AIFRTE) (Organizing Secretary, AIFRTE. Dated: 21/12/2020</div>अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-55678996044591125612020-11-28T08:43:00.001+05:302020-11-28T08:45:39.973+05:30Visions of development :the inevitable need of alternatives : An article by Kishen PattnayakClick the title below -
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BT5tAWhgLLTaJeEaAg1ZgsEr5HdgCHj_/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Visions of development :the inevitable need of alternatives : An article by Kishen Pattnayak
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अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-29134849505728262772020-10-14T06:41:00.007+05:302020-10-16T17:53:38.034+05:30Out of this Earth,Revised new Edition: A Review by Aniruddha Jena<p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-bcde9789-7fff-4074-3339-c22aa58e301f">Samarendra Das & Felix Padel, Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2020), xxxii + 776 pp.</p><p dir="ltr">Can Anthropology of Aluminium Companies Speak for the Adivasis? Epistemological Ruptures in East India Frontier</p><p dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-177ef5b4-7fff-adaa-1795-1d8aba91b185"><br></p><p dir="ltr">Introduction:</p><p dir="ltr">There have been a lot of follow up writings that have encapsulated and demystified the enormity and complexities of ideas, events, histories, experiences, and narratives that Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel encompasses. This review essay is an attempt to re-engage and revisit some of the key aspects and attributes of the new 2020 edition by Samarendra Das and Felix Padel.</p><p dir="ltr">Samarendra Das is an independent researcher, Odia writer, film-maker and activist. He is also closely associated with the Samajvadi Jan Parishad (Socialist People’s Council) -- a political outfit working with grassroots-level movements in India. Das is also a founder member of Foil Vedanta (www.foilvedanta.org), an independent grassroots solidarity organisation focused primarily on the British-Indian mining company Vedanta Resources PLC. Felix Padel is an anthropologist trained in Oxford and Delhi universities. His earlier work Sacrifice of Human Being (1995) looked at the colonial invasion of Kond territory from 1835. It is worth mentioning that the new 2020 edition has some new elements to it. The new edition contains 20 chapters with 808 pages while the 2010 edition was 21 chapters with 774 pages. In this edition, the authors swapped their authorship and this time the activist Das takes the first authorship. The new edition has 14 tables, 24 images, 6 maps, and 8 appendices that makes the book a treasure including the statistics and the list of mines. The 2010 edition came out after the Shah commission was set up to investigate the illegal iron ore and manganese mining situate in India. The book was brought to the Supreme Court’s attention during the landmark case on Niyamgiri. <b>The reason Niyamgiri is best forested area of Odisha’s Bauxite Malis is the only mountain with its own special tribe, the Dongria Kond, who live only in the Niyamgiri range, and have preserved the forest on the mountain summits as sacred to Niyam Raja, the Lord of the Law (p. 64, 2010; p.73, 2020). </b>After 10 years, the world is different, and mankind is witnessing severe and catastrophic environmental challenges in the form of global warming, hurricanes, epidemic, pandemic, flood, landslide, avalanches and more. Amongst the other threats, climate change in particular is the most pressing and urgent issue that the world is facing. The new edition is an updated version with more compelling details and records. It so adeptly presents the intricate linkages of mining-deforestation-climate change and that is one of the new additions which makes this new edition different from the 2010 edition.</p><p dir="ltr">Out of this Earth (OoTE) offers a detailed and overarching view of the aluminium industry worldwide, and also about its production, consumption, and distribution. The authors also focus on aspects like corporate financing, corporate and state nexus, sufferings and exploitations of local and indigenous communities in close proximity with aluminium factories and refineries. The book provides a close view about the trajectories of aluminium and how it became one of the most used metals in the history of mankind. Primarily, the study in this book is located in Khondalite Mountains in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, which is famous for rich deposits of minerals. The book raises some of the key fundamental questions about the political economy of industrialisation in general and the aluminium industry in particular. It also traces the growth and evolution of extractive industries and how these industries have continued to adversely affect innocent communities that are mostly neglected and side-lined by the state and its development paradigm. The authors add more essence to the fundamental questions that the Adivasis are grappling with and they held the Government answerable for that. The authors quote Bhagaban Majhi, a leader of Adivasi resistance to the Utkal Alumina project in Kashipur, Odisha:</p><p dir="ltr">“We have sought an explanation from the government about people who have already been displaced in the name of development. How many have been properly rehabilitated: you have not provided them with jobs; you have not rehabilitated them at all. How can you again displace more people? Where will you relocate them and what jobs will you give them? You tell us first. The Government has failed to answer our questions. Our fundamental question is: how can we survive if our lands are taken away from us? We are tribal farmers. We are earthworms [Matiro Poko], like fishes that dies when taken out of water, a cultivator dies when his land is taken away from him. So we won’t leave our land. We want permanent development.” (Recorded in the film Matiro Poko (Earth Worm, Company Man) by Amerandra and Samarendra Das (2005)</p><p dir="ltr">The book is not limited in its locational positioning to Odisha, India; it also recounts the histories and contemporary scenes of aluminium industry in other countries like Brazil, Australia, Guyana, Jamaica, Guinea, Ghana, and Iceland. The book is quite successful in providing a macro understanding of the aluminium industry and the inhumane and disastrous affect it has on marginalised and locationally disadvantaged communities. </p><p dir="ltr">Importantly, it is essential to indicate that being an Odia myself who hails from Odisha and considering my own background and growing up in a tribal dominated district like Keonjhar, I find this book quite compelling and absorbing for the people of Odisha. It is fascinating to see a work like this that takes the responsibility of being sincere and authentic to the Adivasis, their identities, values, and cultures.</p><p dir="ltr">Moreover, in terms of the theoretical and methodological groundings OoTE is an enriching volume. It goes beyond the traditional and conventional ways and means of doing research in tribal communities by practicing new ways and means that question the conventional anthropological and other sociological styles and patterns of engaging with local and indigenous communities and their lives and cultures. </p><p dir="ltr">The book offers a bottom-up view of community life, culture and how industrialisation and the business interest of corporates have been affecting the social, cultural, geographical, economic and environmental ecosystems of local and indigenous communities. </p><p dir="ltr">Primarily, drawing on empirical evidence from sites located in tribal spaces in Odisha, the book engages with various politically and economically disadvantaged indigenous communities in Odisha to understand how bauxite mining and aluminium production and refining have tremendously affected the social and cultural changes; and more importantly, how industrialisation in the name of so-called development of marginalised and underprivileged communities has been politically motivated; and local people’s best well-being has been economically side-lined and affected by the state and corporate nexus in a very strategic way.</p><p dir="ltr">Methodologically and theoretically, the book foregrounds itself in a robust space and it tries to promote indigenous ways and means of engaging with the tribal communities by employing methods of co-learning, co-listening, and co-narrating. While the book refers and cites global scholarship and literature, it is nevertheless very categorical about not falling in the trap of western methods and methodologies to carry out the study. The book also critiques the western and popular anthropological and other social sciences methods and methodologies and talks about the need for a method like Reverse Anthropology by substantiating it with holistic yet critical analysis that comes out of a true bottom-up approach. On popular development paradigms, the book offers staunch criticism of a development model that is embedded in the corporate-state nexus with invasive and destructive intentions, that hamper the indigenous communities and their lives. </p><p dir="ltr">Furthermore, the book does an in-depth analysis of aluminium companies and how they affect human life by capturing some of India’s strongest and most successful people’s movements, like in Kashipur (for some years) and Niyamgiri, which succeeded in halting mining projects and keep community interests alive. Das and Padel also discuss that,</p><p dir="ltr"> “the extraction of mineral wealth from the tribal land from the consumerism and resource wars of the global elite provides a sharp insight into various forms of power; from overt economic and political power of the industrial-military complex, to the role of aid agencies, NGOs, and academics in obfuscating information to suit their own agendas, an finally, the ability of grassroots people’s movements to mobilise effective action against these huge odds.” (p.xxiii) </p><p dir="ltr">The book promises to offer valuable insights about the global history of aluminium and it traces the evolution of aluminium as a metal and its importance in human life. In that process, the book successfully engages the complexities embedded in the state and corporate nexus, vested interests, and affected community’s response to the growth of aluminium industry. To start off with, the authors raise certain fundamental questions like,</p><p dir="ltr">“How well do we know our earth? How well do we understand how it feeds us, or what we are doing to it through mining? What is the real cost of mining, to our earth and to ourselves? Who really benefits from the extraction and processing of huge quantities of minerals and oil from its depths?” (p.xix)</p><p dir="ltr">The uniqueness of OoTE lies in its representation and narration of India’s Adivasis. Individuals’ voices are very prominent and the authors have skilfully positioned these voices as sharply intelligent and historically situated. As a result, these narrations and positioning of marginalised voices make for a holistic history of India’s people’s movement. </p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p dir="ltr">Bringing in their own involvement with the people’s movements in different parts of Odisha and elsewhere against mining projects, the authors detail the hidden motives and agendas behind expanding and establishing aluminium factories and refineries in rich tribal lands. The book also uncovers the deep socio-economic inequalities entrenched in the state and corporate nexus that aim to mainstream and uproot the tribal communities from their own land. The book establishes how indigenous communities and their social, cultural, and economic ecosystems and infrastructures are close to nature and they have a tradition of co-existing with nature without disturbing and dismantling the ecological balance. Also, the book uses the excerpts of the documentary film Matiro Poko, Company Loka (Das &Das, 2005) made by Amarendra Das & Samarendra Das as evidence. The documentary film captures the trajectories of the resistance movements in the tribal spaces of Odisha. It is a documentary film made with and for the indigenous people of Odisha. It brings the speeches, songs, dances, gestures alive on the screen with the purpose of serving the indigenous people. </p><p dir="ltr">Interestingly, the book also analyses the political economy of the aluminium industry and how international monetary agencies including the World Bank and Britain’s Department for International Development have influenced both local NGOs and state-level economic policies to support the aluminium industry.</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p dir="ltr">Primarily, the authors have tried to bring to light the concealed history of aluminium from different parts of the world and the implications it has had on indigenous communities across the globe by historicising and unpacking the overall patterns of aluminium industries in India and elsewhere (p.xxvi).</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p dir="ltr">The book quite efficiently documents the resistance movements of Kashipur and Niyamgiri to showcase how marginalised voices and their collaborative strength led to the success of people’s movements against the mining projects and their hidden motives that goes against the Adivasis culture and livelihood. It also introduces the idea of ecological racism and how it is playing out in protest sites. The authors ably narrate those stories to unmask the subjugation of the innocent Adivasis. The authors quote an intense conversation between Bhim Majhi, a founding member of the Niyamgiri Surakhya Samiti along with his other fellow village members with the District Collector, showing a clear grasp of climate change and he responded. Their conversation reads:</p><p dir="ltr">They asked, ‘why are you opposing Sterlite Company?’ Majhi replied ‘We are resisting for our motherland, for our mountain. So we oppose Sterlite. We oppose the government. The summer is hot already, it will get worse if Sterlite comes. You won’t get rain then. The summer is so hard already, so we want them to stop.’ Then they say, ‘You are opposing us, can you compete?’ We reply, ‘It is not about winning or losing. We will resist, for our mountain.’ Then they ridicule us and say, ‘What are you Konds up to?’ What do you know about these things?’ (p.167)</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p dir="ltr">This book is an ambitious project that aim to provide a panoramic view for readers to analyse and understand the connections between the aluminium industry, cartels, governments, banks, debt bondage, politics and their impact on the Adivasis (indigenous tribes) of Odisha. The book also exposes an unholy alliance of police, mining companies, politicians and Journalists, which whitewashes and silences public debates to favour the aluminium actors. Also the book changed the site of intervention and gazed at the focus of power and materiality using the political economy framework and anthropology. It also avoids fetishsizing decolonisation to not become redundant like many other works that have only added to the redundancy in the name of so-called rigorous academic scholarship.</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p dir="ltr">Summary:</p><p dir="ltr">In their ambitious and motivated attempt to unpack the hidden histories of bauxite mining and the aluminium industry globally, Das and Padel offer a critical understanding of the complex world of aluminium production, starting from identifying a bauxite mining site to factories, consumption, and distribution. The study also takes into consideration all those possible embedded systems, networks, and nexuses to make sense of the events that actually happen beyond the eyes of the communities that get affected in the process. The book describes the unprecedented plundering of resources in some of the best kept natural resources in states like Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Andhra Pradesh. While doing so, the authors also provide a detailed and extensive account of the atrocities, disparities, inequalities and extraordinary challenges that local and indigenous communities face due to bauxite mining and installation of aluminium factories and refineries. What the book also looks at the state and its administration’s role in facilitating and building a favourable environment for rapid industrialisation at the cost of natural resources and indigenous communities and their livelihoods. While trying to engage and comprehend the global complexities involved in bauxite mining and aluminium production by transnational corporates, the book presents fascinating details of how big names in the extractive industries, multilateral aid agencies, and policymakers who live in cities like New York, Washington or London for that matter, decide the fate of indigenous communities without even analysing and forecasting how extractive industries adversely affect indigenous lives in a disastrous and dreadful way.</p><p dir="ltr">The book is structured in five parts, each of which deals with different aspects of bauxite mining, aluminium production, local resistance, global complexities, the state-corporate nexus and so on. Part I of the book, entitled “White Metal: Green Mask”, provides a detailed and extensive account of the global history of aluminium and how it has become the most consumed metal of late due to the change in global economic order and human lifestyles. This section also offers a descriptive idea about the Konds and Khondalite of Odisha and how local resistance movements in places like Kashipur and Lanjigarh of Odisha brewed up to resist bauxite mining and aluminium production and refining. Going ahead, Part II, entitled “Niyam Raja meets the World-Wide Web: Aluminium’s Social Structure”, demystifies the global complexities involved in understanding the overall social structure of aluminium. This part also maps the entire trajectory of aluminium by looking at the global histories and mining laws in India and elsewhere. While focusing on aluminium in India, the authors particularly emphasise events and developments that occurred in Odisha and how certain acts, laws, and enforcements were made to ensure the entry of global aluminium actors into the indigenous lands of Odisha is a hassle-free affair. Analysing and critiquing the aluminium model for development, empowerment, and prosperity in Part III, the authors present quite a rigorous description of how aluminium is waging a war-like situation in the contemporary age, or what the authors so interestingly and evocatively put it as ‘Aluminium Age’ (p.7). Apart from that, this section also offers a concrete understanding about the ‘Investment-Induced Displacement’ of indigenous communities, their livelihoods and culture. In this section, the authors strongly point out that the biggest impact that extractive industries have on the communities is what can be termed as ‘cultural genocide.’ Moreover, the political-economy of bauxite mining and aluminium industries is also covered in this section. In Part IV, the authors’ argument shows the corporatisation, NGO-isation, and culture of appropriation by large corporate interests quite articulately. This section talks in detail about the role of big money players and aid agencies in facilitating the big aluminium corporates to get their aims achieved at the cost of culture and livelihood of local and indigenous communities. Also, this section looks at how the local level NGOs are deployed with a hidden agenda that is sponsored by the corporates to appropriate and brainwash the indigenous communities to get their things done in the name of development, upliftment, and empowerment. In the last part of the book, the authors are consolidating all the key arguments and summing up in an absorbing way by giving empirical accounts of the movements that eventually tasted success in their fight against big aluminium corporate giants. Primarily, in this section key questions of movements are asked and addressed to understand resistance movements in a more nuanced way. Key questions like:</p><p dir="ltr"> “To what extant are the movements against mining projects separate global and local, and to </p><p dir="ltr"> what extent do they form a single movement? To what extent are they ‘indigenous’? What </p><p dir="ltr"> different stream can be identified as inspiring them? (p.621)”</p><p dir="ltr">The authors also quite efficiently position these mining resistance movements in the larger scholarship that is available in their field. This section also juxtaposes that these people’s movements against mining projects have a strong and complex lineage which sought inspiration from social thinkers and intellectuals like Marx, Lenin, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Rammanohar Lohia, Kishen Pattnayak, and many others. These movements thrive on the values of cooperation, cohabitation, and coexistence with nature. And lastly, the authors round off the book with the stimulating sense of sacredness and how indigenous communities have a greater bonding with the idea of being sacred. For them, nature is everything and everything that is important and necessary for them to be able to survive is actually blessings of nature. Nature is the ultimate thing that they look at and for. Their lives and livelihoods revolve around the idea of nature and it is sacred to them. Alluding to this assertion, one the Padayatra (Foot March) conducted from 17-22 May 2013, passing through every village on the mountains to share information and strategies, Dongria leader Lodo Sikaka spoke to the crowds consisting of five thousand Dongria and Kutia Konds and he affirmed that: </p><p dir="ltr">“They are saying they would mind 10 km away from the peak. We will not allow mining even 100 km away from it! For the forestland, for fruits, trees, air and water—for everything Adivasis worship the soil. It is our given right. They are saying Adivasis have right to up to two feet of soil, not up to 10-20 feet. Government is saying Adivasis worship for the forest and not for the soil. What do we worship for? Forest or soil? We of course worship for the soil. Our gods and goddesses are everywhere: here, there, in the trees—everywhere!” (p.190) </p><p dir="ltr">So the very nature of extractive industries to extract minerals and natural resources underneath the soil goes against the values of the indigenous communities and they feel agitated when their faiths and values are neglected and side-lined for corporate interests. In the last section, the authors quite extensively focus on these ideas and aspects of indigenous communities and their resistance movements against the mining projects to save their mother nature.</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p dir="ltr">Critical Discussion:</p><p dir="ltr">The book explores the intricate details about the geological and economic implications of extractive industries in general and aluminium production and trade in particular. It critically analyses the geology of bauxite mining and aluminium production, distribution, and consumption helps in developing a more nuanced understanding about the complicated and embedded agendas and models involved. In this new edition also, the authors are very particular in substantiating their arguments by providing much important statistical details and references to make their arguments and analyses sound and reasonable. </p><p dir="ltr">The book also argues about the business interests involved in the commodification of aluminium and how it has espoused deep-rooted inequalities and exploitations in the name of development and empowerment. The authors are strongly critiquing this industry model of development because of its lack of understanding of the indigenous communities and their cultures and livelihoods. It also emphasizes the inability of this model to make sustainable efforts to ensure that indigenous communities can continue their peaceful co-existence with their nature. In one of their previous papers, Padel and Das critically analyse the hostile effects of mining projects and metal factories resulting in gross disparity in tribal communities. They also reject the whole rhetoric of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘sustainable mining’ as these ideas have not contributed anything to the indigenous communities in reality. The authors echo the observations of P. Sainath who claims that there are huge amounts of money being pumped into the tribal areas in the name of ‘tribal development’, but unfortunately, it doesn’t make much difference to the lives and realities of the tribal people (Sainath, 1996). One of the harsh and extraordinary impacts that is less talked about and researched is related to the rich ethnic cultures of tribal societies and how these are being killed and vanishing in the name of mainstreaming and development (Padel & Das, 2010). </p><p dir="ltr">Moreover, the book is critically positioned in a space that encourages and urges for decolonising of our relationship with materiality. The book is a strong advocate of respecting tribal lives and their social structure as it details the atrocities being faced by the vulnerable communities in the name of aimless development. The authors also claim that it is not the development of the poor and marginalised, it is actually a false rhetoric which justifies and fulfils the business interests of the big corporates. This book is speaking to a global audience of readers by giving important general scenario about the exploitation of bauxite in Jamaica, Brazil, Australia, Guyana, Guinea, Ghana and Iceland. At the same time the book zeroes in on the particular details of the happenings and development of resistance movements that occurred in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. The authors record and narrate the convoluted details of the state and corporate sponsored disparities and socio-cultural inequalities quite sharply and in the words of Joan Martinez-Alier, this whole exercise and efforts by the authors is termed as Environmentalism of the Indigenous and the Poor (Martinez-Alier, 2002).</p><p dir="ltr">The authors are strong proponents of the idea of Reverse Anthropology (Kirsch, 2006) because of the fact that the authors are not very content and convinced with how the so-called conventional anthropologists and the rigidity in the field of anthropology have failed in providing a holistic understanding of the indigenous. The authors establish that Reverse Anthropology is justifying and summarising the methodology part of this book. The authors argue that many studies have been conducted that aim to offer critical details of how indigenous communities and their social structure and cultural values are devastated by mining project. But according to the authors these studies need to go further deep into the societies in order to understand the prevailing phenomena. They also assert that it is very much essential to understand the idea of Social Construction of Knowledge and Realities (Berger & Luckmann, 1971) in order to decipher critical details of tribal societies.</p><p dir="ltr">The book is very critical of how traditional anthropological orientations interpreted tribal societies during anthropology’s own primitive years in the nineteenth century as an academic field of enquiry. The authors argue that unfortunately the early anthropological studies and observations depicted tribal and indigenous societies as ‘primitive’ and the so-called industrial society as ‘civilised’. But with time, anthropologists have woken upon to this realisation that tribal societies may be less-developed in material terms and division of labour, but they may be more developed in many other terms like social structure, culture, language, and in their relationship with nature. The authors also concede that tribal societies reject the ideas of oppression and exploitation and thrive on shared living, equal relationship, and cooperative labour. The authors also assert that predominantly, studies in anthropology, history, and sociology about mining mostly address issues and themes like migration, tradition, and belief systems, division of labour, and social structure and control etc. In some ways, these studies have essentialised mining communities that have affected the tribal societies in an unbelievable way. It is because of this narrow and very canonical orientation that the existing scholarship is suffering from colour and caste blindness. Instead, the authors argue that studies should question the issues and politics of race embedded in the underdevelopment of tribal societies (p.21). In order to overcome this canonical orientation, the authors are recommending Reverse Anthropology to ensure that the subjects of research should actually take the centre stage and they should start questioning the researchers in order to ensure that the entire exercise is a process of co-learning and conscientization (Freire, 1970). Conscientization helps the subjects of our research to become critical of the process and they will be empowered in their own ways to make sense of the ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions of the happenings around them in the name of research and development.</p><p dir="ltr">In terms of their methodological and theoretical moorings, the authors are very particular about their ways, styles, and templets of articulating the ground realities, observations, and narratives. This work also problematises the embedded ethnographies and how these canonical and top-down studies take knowledge out of the communities by essentialising their indigenous identity. For those kinds of exercises the authors use ‘Extractive Capital’ or ‘Extractivism’ for “extracting knowledge for the communities to engage with Extractivism.” Exposing the gaps in earlier ethnographies, the authors claim that extracting knowledge from the communities and not giving it back is what the hallmark of traditional ethnography. While one the contrary, this book is extracting knowledge out of Aluminium companies and sharing it back with the communities for their greater good. It is also important to mention here that both the authors are non-indigenous and have played a critical role in engaging with the communities to make sense of being indigenous, its meaning and value. </p><p dir="ltr">Throughout the book, one would sense how empathetic the writing is towards the realities of indigenous communities and their lives. It is the methodological and theoretical positioning of the authors and their orientations which have helped in making sense of the complex veracities hidden in the extractive industries in general and bauxite mining and aluminium industries in particular. This position also help the authors in understanding the deep social, cultural, and communication inequalities (Dutta, 2011) embedded in the state and corporate nexus that facilitates the big mining corporations in consolidating their existence in indigenous lands of India and elsewhere.</p><p dir="ltr">Moreover, the use of interesting and robust methods, metaphors, narratives, and concepts, like Matiro Poko, Company Loka, Kagaz (Paper), Dharna, Andolan, Niyam Raja, Karma, Dharma, narrative analysis, oral histories, participating in protests/resistance movements, drafting protest poems and songs with communities, creating protest/social movement media like wall magazine, attending annual general meetings and court proceedings, travelling to and meeting with national and supranational institutions, considering rich archival data, in-depth interviews with key stake holders, content analysis of various government reports, acts, laws, annual reports, and newspaper articles have made this book enriching in terms of the research.</p><p dir="ltr">Lastly, it would be justified to suggest that OoTE is a seminal text. It intrigues with its unique positioning of research and the important lessons it imparts about the adversities that is caused by the frequent occurrence of resource extraction in indigenous lands in all its globalized complexity and local perversity. One of the key lessons of the book is that it exposes the modern-day imperialism in a thought-provoking way. </p><p dir="ltr">In general, the book is a true exposition meant for researchers and students in the field of anthropology, sociology, history, and communication and media studies. OoTE would also serve as a necessary reference point for those who are working on ideas and themes like politics of development, anthropology and political economy of extractive industry, tribal identity and culture, indigeneity, mining, social movements, and social inequalities. Other general English speaking readers will certainly find it richly insightful and informative.</p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p dir="ltr">References:</p><p dir="ltr">Berger, Peter L., and Luckmann. 1971 [1966]. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London:Penguin.</p><p dir="ltr">Das, Amrendra and Samarendra Das. (2005) Matira Poko, Company Loko [Earth Worm, Company Man in Kui/Odia with English subtitles].</p><p dir="ltr">Dutta, Mohan J (2011) Communicating Social Change: Structure, Culture, and Agency. New York: Routledge.</p><p dir="ltr">Freire, Paulo. 2005 [1970] Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, USA: Continuum.</p><p dir="ltr">Kirsch, Stuart. (2006) Reverse Anthropology: Indigenous Analysis of Social and Environmental Relations in New Guinea. California: Stanford University Press.</p><p dir="ltr">Martinez-Alier, Joan. (2002) The Environmentalism of the poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.</p><p dir="ltr">Padel, Felix. 2010 [1995]. The Sacrifice of Human Being: British Rule and the Konds of Orissa. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.</p><p dir="ltr">Padel, Felix & Das, Samarendra. (2010) Cultural Genocide and the Rhetoric of Sustainable Mining in East India, Contemporary South Asia, 18:3, 333-341, DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2010.503871">http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2010.503871</a></p><p dir="ltr">Padel, Felix & Das, Samarendra. (2010) Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel, Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan.</p><p dir="ltr">Sainath, P. (1996) Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India’s Poorest Districts. Delhi, London: Penguine.</p><p dir="ltr"><br><br></p>अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-75514842239030713972020-05-16T21:00:00.001+05:302020-05-16T21:00:14.277+05:30Abuse of power against democratic movements <div class="mail-message-content collapsible zoom-normal mail-show-images "><div class="clear"><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">The All India Forum for the Right to Education (AIFRTE) is fully aware of the threat posed by the Covid-19 crisis to the health and socio-economic well being of the Indian people in particular those who suffer chronic under-employment and unemployment. As such, the AIFRTE and its member organizations, like all other democratic people's organizations, have been in the forefront of activities aimed at ameliorating the conditions of the people in these difficult times and have united with the rest of the country in facing this challenge.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">However, AIFRTE is deeply troubled by the Government of India (GOI) having embarked on an extremely reprehensible course of action. The Covid-19 crisis is being used as a subterfuge for imposing, in a completely unconstitutional and undemocratic manner, policies that will have a far reaching impact on the civil rights of the people and on the character of Indian society.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">The direct and shameless abuse of power, using the colonial anti-sedition law and the recently amended Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) - which targets as terrorists individuals who are not affiliated to a declared terrorist organization - against students, teachers, academics and public intellectuals and civil liberties and human rights activists, has now reached outrageous proportions. All right to dissent is being crushed. Peaceful protestors and activists are being booked and arrested during the Covid-19 `lock-down' which prevents all democratic forms of protest, and are being held without the possibility of trial under prison conditions that are an extreme health hazard because of the pandemic. We note in particular arrests of organizers of the Jamia Co-ordination Committee (JCC) which has played an inspiring and leading role, following the ruthless attack by the police on the Jamia Milia Islamia campus, in defending the constitutional rights of people and demanding the repeal of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">We are outraged by the fact that victims of the state-sponsored riots in north Delhi are being charged with instigating the violence that has destroyed their homes and livelihood. Everywhere the story is the same. Peaceful struggles, whether against massive fee-hikes on university campuses or powerful democratic resistance against the blatantly anti-constitutional CAA, have been viciously attacked. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">Compelling evidence of the role of right-wing hindutva forces and identified leaders, including ministers of the ruling cabinet, in instigating violence with police protection and backed by the ruling party and government is shamelessly ignored and brushed aside. Either no action at all is taken against them or else they are immediately released on bail on minor charges. However, peaceful protestors are charged with trumped up heinous crimes and incarcerated under draconian laws.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">The ruling regime is thus not only continuing but is intensifying under Covid-19 lock-down the strategy used against democratic activists and intellectuals in the Bhima-Koregaon case. The recent arrest and incarceration of Prof. Anand Teltumbde and Gautum Navlakha on Ambedkar Jayanti (14th April 2020) despite the clear threat of the Corona virus to the lives of these senior citizens with co-morbidities is a brazen assault against defenders of civil liberties.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">Unfortunately, the highest judiciary appears to have caved in before this concerted attack and has repeatedly failed to protect the citizens. The result is that the regime is acting with increasing impunity as seen in the inhuman arrest and incarceration in solitary confinement of the pregnant research student Safoora Zargar for participating in the anti-CAA protests. Similarly, Police searched the house of Kanwalpreet, state secretary of Delhi AISA and confiscated her mobile phone, warning her of dire consequences because of her participation in `illegal' activities.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">Another recent action of the Delhi Police which functions under the Centre reveals the level to which this harassment has sunk. Mahesh, a unit secretary of Parivartankami Chhatra Sangh (PACHHAS) has been subjected to false cases under sections 188, 269, 270 and Disaster Management Act 51. He has been charged with instigating protest on social media by observing hunger strike in his own home on 23 April 2020 as part of a country-wide daylong hunger strike in solidarity with migrant workers and students. The demands of the strikers were testing of stranded workers and students for infection, provision of facilities to take them home and immediately providing ration and financial help for the stranded across the country.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">Under these hostile circumstances the GOI has introduced a series of ordinances and regulations regarding working hours and conditions, salary and pension structures, the education system and widespread digital surveillance under the pretext of improving the public health system. As usual the GOI finds it unnecessary to even inform the people, let alone debate these issues and follow democratic conventions and procedures in implementing them.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN"> AIFRTE is deeply concerned and disturbed by these measures all of which must be exposed and resolutely opposed. The GOI is exploiting the Covid-19 crisis for crushing all dissent.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">At the same time it has failed to act to protect the health of the people against the virus. The lock-down, unplanned and imposed in a sudden four-hour time-span, caused enormous hardship for the people and a humanitarian crisis of disastrous proportions for lakhs of migrant workers who are the real builders of the country. Instead of strengthening the healthcare infrastructure and protecting healthcare workers, a political farce has been set in motion by calling upon citizens to bang utensils, light lamps and finally have the armed forces shower petals on hospitals instead of saving the migrant workers trying to walk back home across the country from hunger, exhaustion and even death.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">AIFRTE appeals to all member and fraternal organizations, and all democratic individuals across the country to unite and raise their voices against this fascist authoritarian regime even as they unite to provide support and relief to the working masses for whom the Modi Government has shown neither concern nor respect.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">Prof. Jagmohan Singh <wbr> Dr. Vikas Gupta</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">(Chairperson, AIFRTE) <wbr> (Organizing Secretary, AIFRTE)</span><span lang="EN-IN"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-IN">(On Behalf of AIFRTE’s Presidium)</span><span lang="EN-IN"></span></p><div><span lang="EN-IN"><br></span></div></div></div></div>अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-91095107704877096352020-01-04T10:36:00.001+05:302020-01-04T10:46:21.935+05:30Parliament vs People<div>We have long been accustomed to think that power comes only through Legislative Assemblies. I have regarded this belief as a grave error brought about by inertia or hypnotism. </div><div>A superficial study of British history has made us think that all power percolates to the people from parliaments. The truth is that power resides in the people and it is entrusted for the time being to those whom they may choose as their </div><div>representatives. Parliaments have no power or even existence independently of the people. It has been my effort for the last twenty-one years to convince the people of this simple truth. Civil Disobedience is the storehouse of power. </div><div>Imagine a whole people unwilling to conform to the laws of the legislature, and prepared to suffer the consequences of non-compfiance! They will bring the whole legislative and executive machinery to a standstill. The police and . the military are of use to coerce minorities however powerful they may be. But no police or military coercion can bend the resolute will of a people who are out for suffering to the uttermost. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-12234547675019942202019-11-30T06:26:00.001+05:302019-11-30T06:26:21.370+05:30Quarterly Estimates of GVA at Basic Prices in Q2 (July-September) of 2019 - 20 (at2011-12 prices)The basis of calculation has changed. As per pre-2014 calculation it is around 2.5%. Extremely scary.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div>अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-91216379676276025252019-10-19T08:22:00.001+05:302019-10-19T08:22:42.515+05:30Political, Economic & Social Resolution : Samajwadi Jan Parishad, 12,13 October,2019<div><b>Samajwadi Jan Parishad</b></div><div>National Executive, 12 &13 October, New Delhi</div><div><b><u>Political, Economic & Social Resolution</u></b> </div><div><br></div><div>Having grabbed power with larger majority for the second tenure, BJP and RSS have started implementing their real and larger agenda in full speed. The signals were loud and clear with Amit Shah taking over as Home Minister at the Center. We all know that this right wing formation has only two objectives – first to polarize Hindu votes by propagating hate and all sorts of canards against minorities in general and Muslims in particular, to remain in power and second – to hand over all national resource to select crony-capitalists in order to accumulate massive wealth for their leaders and Party. Welfare of millions of starving, malnourished and jobless Indians has never been concern of BJP and their allies. </div><div> Due to pedestrian and ill-conceived economic policies deployed by NDA during their last tenure the country has started heading towards an imminent slowdown. To divert attention, Article 370 and 35A were abolished in Kashmir and all Kashmiris were made hostage by the Army, a situation never seen in the history of democracies. This move was aimed at evoking emotional aggressive nationalism of a section of population and effort to bury the burning economic issues at hand. SJP is of the view that policies of capitalism are unable to deliver results of growth, employment etc. at national and international level. Therefore BJP Govt. is aggressively taking forward divisive agenda of NRC & Temple construction and probably constitution amendment. All these steps are taking the nation towards an unprecedented crisis. </div><div> We have been regularly deliberating about series of deceptions by the government like handing over govt enterprises to select capitalist friends, electoral frauds, massive one-sided deployment of money in elections, taking full control of all democratic institutions even the judiciary. Therefore, we will not elaborate further on these issues here. Even more disturbing signals came from Supreme Court where Habitus-Corpus cases related to Kashmir were not given ant importance. All these signals indicate that Indian Democracy and our Constitution is under attack and this issue is the most challenging contemporary matter at hand. New provisions brought in UAPA is meant to suppress all dissenting voices against government. Thus, common man is now even deprived of his basic right to protest against injustice. They are either confused about magic shows being played daily before them or they are scared of repression. A simple criticism of government action is converted in sedition case. </div><div> This has also been demonstrated repeatedly that none of the so-called opposition party has a vision, leadership, organizational structure or plans to steer out nation from this miserable collapse. It is therefore incumbent upon SJP to come forward with alacrity and devotion to fulfill the purpose of our formation as an alternate political entity. </div><div> It’s worthwhile to note here that the present ruling outfit has gained its strength by manipulating our democracy through communal and castiest interventions on a large and obvious scale. In the process, the liberal traditions of Hinduism, multi-cultural ethos of India and our long-standing Sufi traditions are being replaced by medieval, feudalistic, Hinutwa bigotry. At the same time BJP has been pitching various castes against each other for their electoral advantage while the castes which gained political prominence via reservation plank are oblivious of this divisive game plan and the fact that all round privatization and capitalistic economic / administrative policy is eliminating employment scope in public and govt sector. Privatization of govt run schools, institutions and transfer of existing units to private business houses via PPP model, government is disowning its primary welfare responsibility while farmers are being lured by advancing petty doles. Land, forest, water resources, mines, all are being handed over to private businessmen. On the other hand, artisans and self-employed are losing their livelihood in the hands of market forces and manufactured goods. Agreements signed with World Bank and WTO have already heavily and adversely impacted our farmers and local producers. Further to this an agreement with RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), a group of ten ASIAN countries comprising of Australia, Japan, South Korea, India among others, is likely to be signed in November 2019 which will further bring misery to our farmers and forest producers. It’s shocking that government is not revealing the details of proposed agreements. We have to fish out information from web sites of other countries. SJP condemns such secretive approach of government in dealing with matters of larger public interest and demands public declaration of all related documents. </div><div> The results of gross mismanagement of economy and administrative set up of country during last five and half years are now showing their impact all around. Economy is in doldrums, GDP growth rate has tumbled down to an eleven year low of 5% while the government is tom-toming a 5 Trillion Dollar economy by falsifying and hiding statistics. While the fact remains that India’s growth rate is now lower than that of Bangladesh and Pakistan and prominent economists have gone to extent of affirming that real rate in close to negative. </div><div> SJP advocates limiting personal income and imposing upto 70% personal tax in higher slabs. Simultaneously inheritance / wealth tax should be reintroduced and indirect taxes should be minimized to increase the purchasing power of common citizens in order to improve the economy. </div><div> India’s legal and criminal justice system is in shambles. Poor innocent citizens and Adivasis in particular are being detained and lodged in jails for years together without proper investigation or legal proceeding which has become worse than even colonial era. SJP also protests demanding proof of identity at the time of casting votes when the photo identity is available with polling officers and agents. </div><div> Social Economic and Caste Census – SECC 2011 was conducted during UPA II and data is ready but this government has put it in cold storage for more than four years now. On the other hand, citizens are being harassed and terrorized in the name of NRC in many states. The rumor of putting non-NRC citizens in detention camps in Assam is not acceptable to SJP. Rather we suggest such persons should be allowed to remain in their houses. SJP also demands that India should take lead in facilitating free movement of people residing in Indian Subcontinent in line with vision of Dr. Lohia in order to facilitate universal brotherhood and peaceful social political climate in the region .</div><div>Proposed by Prof @Mahesh Vikram</div><div>Unanimously adopted.</div>अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-69362710227978622162019-04-29T08:41:00.001+05:302019-04-29T08:41:59.416+05:30अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-12032099287956545432019-04-29T08:31:00.003+05:302023-10-18T10:56:33.603+05:30Hitlerism in GermanyHow Long Will It Go On? By Ram Manohar Lohia, Ph.D (Berlin)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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(Mr. Lohia has just returned from Germany after a stay of four year», during which he took- a course in Political Economy, History and Philosophy in the University of Berlin. His thesis for the Doctrate Degree of Philosophy, which he eventually took with honours was "The Taxation of Salt in India," dealing with its historical as well as it its financial and political importance. In Berlin he was for sometime the Secretary of the "Hindustan Association of Central Europe)</div>
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The process of complete organisational crippling of the Opposition in Germany can be said to be almost complete now. With the cleansing of the State machinery of all "non-national elements and the suppression of all Communists and Republican associations like the Reichsbauner and the "Iron Front,” based on even the faintest military lines, and, in view of the opposition press being muzzled or almost non-existent, it is legitimate to conclude that Hitler has succeeded in depriving the Opposition of even the most elementary organisational basis. </div>
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The newest political event in Germany of Hitler being armed with absolute dictatorial power serves to dispel any misgivings about his position in his own "nationalistic block." The national question, therefore, that at the present stage of German political development arises in everyone's mind is: How long? Is Hitler going to have a long, possibly interminably long, lease of power?</div>
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An attempt at an objective examination of the question must necessarily take account of the reasons that raised Hitler from being "the last of the seven" in a beer-group of Munich to the Chancellorship of the German Republic and the, leadership of a party of 17 million voters, in, the course of little more than 10 years. Do these reasons still hold good? Are the factors that raised Hitler to power still a live-force in German politics?</div>
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POST-WAR MOOD OF DEPRESSION</div>
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Hitler's own words uttered some time ago ''I am a trumpeteer who aroused the nation to a realisation of its downfall and consciousness of its strength” give us a clear idea of one of Hitler's chief helping forces- The German defeat in the World-War, the humiliation of the Treaty, Reparations and territorial annexations coupled with alarming industrial depression and unemployment served to create a general disaffection and put the nation in a ''messaic" mood. The rickety, compromising, unsteady nature of German Governments after the War they were all "coalition governments between the Catholic Centre, religious, liberal and capitalistic and the Social Democrats supplied sufficient propagandist ground. Hitler saw his chance and seized it. He used the catchy phrase glorious German history" ''national pride and honour" "our wonderful industry and technique” ''the superiority of the Germanic race” and very clever shouldered the Communists and the Socialists whom he classed together as the 'red" or Marxist pest, with the responsibility, for all German ills. The petite bourgeoisie, which forms a great part of the population, was attracted, and embittered against the ''Reds". A very widespread desire for a strong national government and a unified German people took hold of men's minds and the "Reds" became the scapegoats, “traitors’’ the hindrance to the Germanic glory.</div>
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PROMISES FOR ALL </div>
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This general feeling was strengthened by practical promises. Germany was promised the abolition of the Reparations the recovery of German territories annexed according to the. clauses of the Versailles Treaty. and equality of military status with other nations. Unemployment was to be banished altogether and every German was promised bread and work, In fact the National Socialist anthem suggests a general rejoining of the masses and says, in glory of the Swastika flag-"the day of bread and freedom dawns." The best way of symptomising these promises is to quote a rather caustic Opposition saying prevalent all over Germany. ''The house-owner is promised high rents, and the tenant low, the industry promised high profit and the worker, better wages and living conditions and so on.”</div>
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CAPITALIST HELP</div>
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Financial help from capital and heavy industry and Herr Thyssen and Hugenberg controlling iron and coal industries of Germany being in active sympathy with Nazis, has been of the greatest assistance to the party. It can be safely presumed they are going to be so in the future, too. For though the National Socialist programme should have Socialism in it, on the basis of its name, it contains instead the assurance that, private property shall exist under Nazi regime. Only that it should not be misused for profits sake and so go contrary to the nation's welfare. But that is just a piece of unforseeaable advice to be used or unused at the employer's wishes. Such other reasons as the lure of a military uniform to the German people and the use of beautiful military trappings by the Storm Troopers may also have tended to increase the party's ranks. How far are these forces still active? Can it be said that the promises are - now losing, or will in the near future - lose, their catching strength? </div>
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NO LAURELS THROUGH FOREIGN POLICY</div>
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We may first enquire into the factors of the general foreign and internal policy penned and pursued by the Nazis and their capacity to satisfy the masses in this regard. Reparations were abolished even before the Nazis came into power. Recovery of lost territories is a tougher question and it is difficult to imagine how the Nazis are going to regain control of the Polish Corridor, separating West Prussia from East Prussia which nevertheless they have batteried with their most formidable effectives. A propagandist chart disclosing the infinitely superior strength of the Polish military position in comparison to the German on the Eastern Front could be noticed even on the walls of the Decanate of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Berlin which, while it expresses the desire and the psychological preparedness of the Germans to acquire the Corridor, also gives us to understand that a war-like complication is absolutely necessary. Germany cannot afford the luxury of a war. The only course in which the Nazis can gain laurels of foreign policy is therefore an international agreement concerning a general or limited military service of the German Youth. Some psychological success may also be attained by such an event, as the return of the Ex-Kaiser to Germany, as a private man of course, not on account of its political but its news importance—a pure chauvinistic sensation. </div>
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"MARXISM MUST BS KILLED"</div>
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The field of foreign policy being thus limited, Hitler's dynamic force, to is naturally transferred to the internal questions of the establishment of a strong authoritative Government and the complete incapacitation of the "Reds." The buccaneering art with which Hitler dealt, and is still dealing with the Opposition is not in the least astonishing; it is an unavoidable development of the German political phase. The mass of voters who cast their votes for Hitler have one supreme obsession. "Marxism mast be killed." Every single act of political repression of the Opposition serves, therefore, to reach two ends at a time. It means the stabilisation of Hitler in power and the continual restoration of the confidence in the leader by the exhilarated and pleased masses. </div>
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It was one of my most common experiences that otherwise educated and cultured German students expressed their glee even upon personal assaults by the Storm Troopers on their adversaries. This political stunt may be expected to be of great use to Hitler and be of the utmost importance to the consideration of his power. The only hope for the Opposition, in this case lies in the eventual fiasco of the economic programme of the Nazis. This is a subject about which nothing ran be prophesied in present world depression.</div>
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25 March, 1933, The Hindu.</div>
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अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-83080094678909677792018-10-18T19:28:00.001+05:302018-10-18T19:28:22.477+05:30Shri Kamal Krishna Banerjee's letter to Shri Naveen Patanayak,CM; Odisha.<div align="left" ><p dir="ltr">Sri Nabin Pattanayak<br>
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<div align="left" ><p dir="ltr">Hon’ble Chief Minister<br>
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<div align="left" ><p dir="ltr">Orissa<br>
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<div align="left" ><p dir="ltr">                                                                             18.10.2018<br>
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<div align="left" ><p dir="ltr">Sir<br>
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      On 15<sup>th</sup> October Raigad  police arrested leading member of Niyamgiri Suraksha Samity - Sathi  Dhadi Kadraka from Muniguda and brutally assaulted him. To lodge protest against such undemocratic and unruly act of your police,  National Vice- President of Samajwadi  Jan Parisad Satihi  Lingraj Azad has convened a peaceful demonstration on 23<sup>rd</sup>October at Raigard.  But Police  constantly putting pressure upon Satihi  Lingraj Azad to postpone the programme  on 23<sup>rd</sup> October. Even S.P of the  neighbouring district  Kalahandi  called Satihi  Lingraj Azad at PS and put pressure on him to  postpone 23<sup>rd</sup> October program. These kind of arm twisting act of your police administration is not only undemocratic, abuse of power but also violates the fundamental right of assembly and freedom of expression.</p>
<p dir="ltr">         You are aware that Niyamgirii Suraksha Samity  has all along  organised various kinds of movements in a peaceful democratic manner to protect interest of the Adibasi community of Nyamgiri Hills from the attempt of the  Vedanta Company  to take over Nyamgiri hills for boxite mining.   </p>
<p dir="ltr">      You may recall that by the order of the Hon’ble Supreme Court  opinion of the Adibasi inhabitants was taken. At that time despite all kinds of harassment, allurement and fear let lose by the Vedanta Company with the active aid of the state and central govt. and also ignoring the call of the Maoist to boycott opinion poll not a single vote was given in favour of Vedanta Company.</p>
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<p dir="ltr">        It seems that Vendata Company again appears in the scene and Orissa police is acting at the behest of the Vedanta Company to destroy the peaceful democratic struggle of the innocent Adibasi of Nyamgiri Hills to save their life, livelihood  and environment in and around the Niyamgiri Hills from the clutch of the ill famed Vedanta Company.</p>
<p dir="ltr">        We strongly condemn such illegal act of your  police appeal to you to restrain the Raygard Police from creating any obstruction for holding peaceful demonstration of Nyamgiri Surksha Samity to be held on 23<sup>rd</sup>. October.</p>
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<p dir="ltr">Yours sincerely</p>
<p dir="ltr">Kamal Krishna Banerjee</p>
<p dir="ltr">National President</p>
<p dir="ltr">Samajwadi  Jan Parisad</p>
<p dir="ltr">Jalpaiguri (West Bengal)</p>
<p dir="ltr">India.</p>
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-66734076943606906732018-10-06T11:43:00.001+05:302018-10-06T11:49:46.807+05:30जरूरी डबिंग, 'ये दिल और उनकी निगाहों के साये'<p dir="ltr"><br>
जयदेव द्वारा संगीतबद्ध प्रेम परबत का यह गीत बहुत लोकप्रिय हुआ था।<br>
इस फिल्म की सभी प्रिंट्स जल गईं।ऑडियो को दूसरे गानों पर बैठाया गया है।मधुमति में दिलीप कुमार और वैजयंतीमाला के गीत के साथ गजब बैठ गया है।<br>
<a href="https://youtu.be/IWxji7I-JP0">https://youtu.be/IWxji7I-JP0</a></p>
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-10792812834036301182018-09-20T11:11:00.001+05:302018-09-20T11:11:32.204+05:30Satyagrah<p dir="ltr"><span style="color:#FF0000;"><b>LETTERS</b></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><b>Satyagraha</b></p>
<p dir="ltr">A.G. NOORANI warns us of being “unsafe and unhistorical to cite the Gandhian precedent before independence” (“Gandhi's no to satyagraha”, August 26). Noorani has tried to establish that both Gandhiji and B.R. Ambedkar were against satyagraha in the post-Independence era. Gandhiji was perhaps more conscious of the dangers of being misunderstood and misrepresented by his readers and others. Books of his original writings carry a note “To The Reader” originally written by him in his journal ( Harijan, 29-4-1933, page 2). It says: “ I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent…. When anybody finds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he has still faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the later of the two on the same subject.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">To be “safe” and “historical”, I would like to start from Gandhi's martyrdom so that nothing remains later than that. Gandhi gave Pyarelalji a new draft Constitution for the Congress that he had prepared the previous day. “The struggle for the ascendancy of civil over military power is bound to take place in India's progress towards its democratic goal.” The draft contained this prediction. We can easily imagine the nature of the struggle that Gandhi had imagined. It would have been fought through peaceful and pure means. Gandhiji observed a fast (a mode of satyagraha) on Independence Day. He was asked whether he would leave politics after August 15, 1947. Gandhiji replied, “In the first instance there is no freedom approaching the Kingdom of God. We seem to be as far from it as ever. And in any case the life of the millions is my politics from which I dare not free myself without denying my life work and God. That my politics may take a different turn is quite possible. But that will be determined by circumstances ( Harijan, 17-8-1947, page 281).</p>
<p dir="ltr">His last two post-Independence fasts, in Kolkata and Delhi respectively, were in the wake of communal violence after Partition. Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel were in the saddle of power. Noorani is known for his writings on communalism and should not deny Gandhiji's contribution through these two fasts and ultimately by his utmost sacrifice. Gandhiji's speeches and writings on satyagraha have been sanctified by his righteous practice and suffering the consequences of breaking unjust laws. Moreover, they are written for all time. His incisive logic is unanswerable.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Gandhiji has made it amply clear that he believed in the supremacy of the people. In his famous booklet “Constructive Programme: Its meaning and place”, he elaborated his vision in clear terms: “The truth is that power resides in the people and it is entrusted for the time being to those whom they may choose as their representatives. Parliaments have no power or even existence independently of the people. Civil Disobedience is the storehouse of power.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Ambedkar delineated how fundamental rights can be effective. He said: “Rights are protected not by law but by the social and moral conscience of society.” The social and moral conscience of the Indian people protected these fundamental rights when they got an opportunity to choose between democracy and dictatorship in the 1977 general elections. In spite of all the infighting in the Janata Party, its government should be remembered for the historical amendment it made to the Constitution to make “internal emergency” next to impossible.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The right to undertake civil disobedience, or satyagraha, in any parliamentary democracy by a citizen is a fundamental right. To criticise this right is to negate the basic democratic system.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Aflatoon<br>
Varanasi</p><p dir="ltr">https://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2820/stories/20111007282012600.htm <br></p>
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-83639022804705882662017-10-30T06:20:00.000+05:302017-10-30T06:20:06.839+05:30BANK OFFICERS` BODY FILES PIL AGAINST AADHAR LINKAGE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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ALL INDIA BANK OFFICERS’ CONFEDERATION<br />(Registered under the Trade Unions Act 1926, Registration No.:3427/Delhi)<br />State Bank of India Officers’ Association<br />04th Floor, SBI Administrative Unit, <a href="https://maps.google.com/?q=No.+86,+Rajaji+Salai,+Chennai&entry=gmail&source=g" style="color: #1155cc;">No. 86, Rajaji Salai, Chennai</a>- 600 001<br />Phone: 044-25227170 Tel/Fax 044 25227170<br />E-Mail: <a href="mailto:aiboc.sectt@gmail.com" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">aiboc.sectt@gmail.com</a></div>
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Date: 26.10.2017</div>
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PRESS RELEASE.</div>
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BANK OFFICERS` BODY FILES PIL AGAINST AADHAR LINKAGE</div>
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In the recent times, we have seen an overdrive of threatening to freeze existing bank accounts unless the customers link to Aadhaar. They are also refusing to open new bank accounts without Aadhaar, citing GSR 538(E), the amendment to the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records) Rules, 2005 under the Prevention of Money-laundering Act, 2002 (15 of 2003)(PMLA), on June 1st 2017.<br />Linkage of Aadhar with the bank accounts and other financial transactions is a clear case of the violation of basic human rights of the citizens of this country. In spite of this, the Govt of India made mandatory the unique identification project (UID Project) through Rule 9 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Rules, 2017 as amended by the Prevention of Money Laundering (Second Amendment) Rules, 2017 for the purpose of opening and maintaining bank accounts and for carrying any financial transactions.<br />As per the amended rules, an Aadhaar Number has been made mandatory for opening of bank accounts; making any financial transactions of and above Rs. 50,000; and foreign remittance to be credited even to small accounts. Further, the existing bank account holders have been directed to furnish Aadhaar Number before <span class="aBn" data-term="goog_887018412" style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(204, 204, 204); position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">December 31, 2017</span></span> and non-compliance of the same will result in the concerned bank accounts being ceased. Consequently, every citizen is being compelled to possess an Aadhaar Number for not only opening of a new bank account, but also for maintaining the existing bank accounts and making transactions through such bank accounts.</div>
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Further, it violates the right to privacy which is now recognized as an essential part of life and personal liberty. The Supreme Court of the country has also upheld the same in its landmark judgment which says that ‘Privacy’ is a fundamental right of every individual. By compelling the citizens to surrender the core biometric information, it has violated all three principal aspects of privacy viz. Privacy of Person, Privacy of information and Privacy of choice. Moreover, the said provision has been enacted without legislative competence rendering it void ab initio, being ultra vires in nature as being a subordinate legislation, it could not have changed the otherwise consensual scheme of Aadhaar Act into a mandatory scheme thereby overturning the entire legislative policy of Aadhaar. The provision has also exceeded the mandate of its parent sections under the PMLA Act by mandating ceasing of operation of non – Aadhaar holders’ bank accounts. This is not the end; the provision also violates the Article 14 of the Constitution of India as forcing every individual to surrender his core biometrics unfairly equates him to a criminal. Ceasing operations of legitimate accounts also unfairly equates legitimate funds to crime proceeds which are to be attached under the PMLA Act. To worsen the situation further, linking of Aadhaar and Bank accounts defeats the object of the PMLA Act itself as it allows real money launderers to launder crime proceeds by executing identity thefts. Such thefts are highly probable considering the nature of information and its storage.</div>
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Thus, making Aadhar compulsory is illegal and would virtually convert the citizens into "slaves" as they would be under the government's surveillance all the time; apart from violating the citizens' fundamental rights granted under the Constitution as they would be coerced to give sample of their fingerprints and iris.</div>
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The All India Bank Officers Confederation, the largest officers' organization having membership of around 325000 officers is in opposition to the move of the Govt. for making Aadhar Card mandatory to citizens rather than being voluntary. When the matter is subjudice in the supreme court, the urgency of the Govt. in its implementation is uncalled for and against the true spirit of democracy. Taking all these factors into consideration, the undersigned along with Mr. M.G. Devasahayam, retired IAS and Mr. Samuel Rajappa, Former Resident Editor, The Statesman have filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against the Union of India and Unique Identification Authority of India in the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India. We sincerely believe and are quite hopeful that with the good wishes of all the people, we will be successful to thwart the ill-motivated steps of the Govt. of India and the Hon’ble Supreme Court would uphold the spirit of the fundamental rights of our compatriots and we will not have to remain as the slaves to the Govt. by virtue of mandatory aadhar for all.</div>
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(D. T. Franco)<br />General Secretary<br />9445000806<br /><a href="mailto:ngcfranco@gmail.com" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">ngcfranco@gmail.com</a></div>
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अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-50186458881515682812017-10-26T15:34:00.000+05:302019-02-08T19:45:16.378+05:30Economics After Marx : Ram Manohar Lohia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<pre style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Monaco, Menlo, Consolas, "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.42857; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 9.5px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-break: break-all; word-wrap: break-word;">[During the open Rebellion of 1942-43 against British-rule,
when socialists were in prison or being hunted and communists
waged their peoples’ war in - companionship with foreign masters,
the doctrine of Marxism ■ appalled me with its wide range of
contradictory applications. To recover its truth and demolish
its untruth became one of my desires. Of the four aspects planned,
economics, politics, history and philosophy, I was halfway through
the economic when the police got me.
Since then, this style of enquiry and expression has ceased to
interest me. No man’s thought should be made the centre of a
political action; it should help but not. control. Acceptance and
rejection are varying forms of blind worship. I believe that it is
silly to be a Gandhian or Marxist and it is equally so to be an
anti-Gandhian or anti-Marxist. There are priceless treasures
to learn from Gandhi as from Marx, but the learning can only be
done when the frame of reference derives not from an age or a
person.
Researchists must still enquire into a man’s thought, parti-
cularly if the man is Marx or Gandhi. The pages that follow
are thoroughly incomplete and no change has been made since they
were written. But error is also a source of knowledge. I only
hope that I have made some significant statements so as to titillate
some man of greater talent and industry into further enquiry.
In any event, these pages, I hope, show the need of an economic
thought different from any that exists today that will turn the
whole world into the gay unity of equal welfare.]
Communism began as a programme of social justice. Its
basis was the achieving of a classless society. Like other pro-
grammes of social justice, it was early faced with greed and
ignorance and the sarcasm of those who denounce everything great
as unpractical and impossible. It, therefore, elaborated a whole
system of philosophy, history and economy. The fact that its
first philosopher was a German of the nineteenth century might
172
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
have played a part. In any case the elaboration of an entire
system of thought in furtherance of a concrete programme of
human improvement is nothing new to history; Vedism, Buddhism,
Christianity, Liberalism have gone through a similar phase.
What was new in the elaboration of Communism was its claim
to being scientific, its assertion that it was not a moral law but a
causal law. Communism, so claims its philosophy, is a necessary
conclusion of the development of capitalism; the classless society
must come. Around this claim has arisen a whole code of laws.
This code formulated by Marx, has produced such powerful effect
that Communism and Marxism* have become synonymous, that
all Socialists and Communists are in various degrees influenced
by it. A study of this system of laws should preferably begin in
the realm of capitalist economy, to which it is nearest in scope
and where it is likely to have made the least errors. A summary
of the principle and laws of capitalist development as formulated
by Marxism must first be made.
The principle of capitalist development lies in the fact that
labour is a commodity like any other commodity. Capitalists buy
labour in order that they may with its help produce other
commodities for sale. But labour, unlike other commodities,
carries within itself two contradictory values. Every other com-
modity has a single consistent value, the time that is socially
necessary to produce it. Labour has indeed this value, Avhich is
measured by such food and clothing and other requirements of
the labourer as are effective in a given capitalist phase. The
labourer works and is given his feed so that he may work again.
What is given as his “feed” in any particular period is his wages.
This is one value of labour, its exchange value, the value of its
reproduction, its wages. But labour has another value, its use-
value to the capitalist who buys it. The capitalist pays for the
labour power of the worker but receives in return all the goods
produced by it. From among these goods, a part goes towards
the wages of the worker but another remains as the profit of the
[* Sometimes known as Marxism-Leninism, as Lenin was the first man
to put Marxism into the practice of a State apd also made partial additions
to its general theory. ]
capitalist; the labourer’s day is split up into t\yo parts, one of
which produces wages and another profits. Herein lies the source
of all capitalist profits and not in other transactions, for labour,
is the sole creator of value. In his drive for profits, the capitalist,
indeed, tries to make use of machines and improve them in order
that he may turn labour-power to better account. Machines do
not produce better profits; it is mechanised labour that does so.
Clearly, therefore, the dynamic of capitalist development lies in
the contradiction between the value and the use-value of labour,
between .wages and produce. This contradiction is the source of
surplus value, which makes up the entire profits* of the capitalist
system. In the career of surplus value can be discerned a whole
series of laws of capitalist production and development.
Capital leads to further accumulation of capital. Surplus
value or capitalist profits are used for improved machinery and
joint labour, which in their turn produce increased surplus value.
This is the law of capitalist accumulation.
Under capitalism, however, production and circulation cannot
keep pace with each other. More is produced than can be bought,
because productivity of labour and profits continually increase
while wages remain comparatively fixed. There is thus a lag
between the production and the purchasing power of a population,
which causes crisis in industry. This is the law of the periodic
crises of capitalism.
More capital is put into making heavy and intricate machinery,
into building the means of production. This tides over the crisis
for a while, for it does not immediately lead to increased produc-
tion, but it lays the basis for a higher productivity in the near
future. The organic composition of capital increases, the rate of
profit falls, large-scale production increases, smaller capitalists are
thrown out and capitalism changes into monopoly capitalism.
This is the law of concentration of capital or of large-scale and
monopoly production.
*Not to be confused with the profits of the entrepreneur. These are
the sum of the rent, interest and high earnings of the entire system.
, While capital accumulates and concentrates, large sections
are turned into the workless, the reserves of industry, and the
workers themselves become increasingly poorer. This is the law
pauperisation and of accumulation of poverty.
At the same time, the working class is increasingly unified
and becomes conscious of itself, by virtue of the fact that it works
co-operatively and in large numbers in the big-scale monopolist
industries. This is the law of socialisation of labour.
Passing through these laws of development, the contradiction
between the price of labour and its produce assumes sharp forms.
It becomes the contradiction between capitalist appropriation and
socialised production, between old relations and expanding forces,
between monopoly capitalists and an angry, numerous, socialised
working-class. The class-struggle enters its last phase, when the
capitalist husk is burst asunder by the working-class. This is
known as the law of the class-struggle leading to the dictatorship
of the proletariat.
To these laws must be added yet another on the general crisis
of capitalism, when there are no longer any alternating periods
of boom and depression in industry. In this period of general
and continuing crisis, there are imperialist wars, general exhaus-
tion of capitalism and the victory of the world working-class.
This is the law of the general crisis of capitalism leading to im-
perialist wars and the law of the World Revolution.*
In his well-known passage establishing how “the expropria-
tors are expropriated," Marx has in a broad sweep defined these
“immanent laws of capitalist production" as the “centralisation
of capital, — ^purposive application of science to the improvement
* In the elaboration of this law, Engels and Lenin have played a
greater part than Marx. Although twenty six years before the 1914 war,
Engels foresaw “the creation of the conditions for the final victory of the
working-class” through the "general exhaustion” of capitalism in a war,
it was left to Lenin and his theoreticians to deepen the law of the periodic
crisis into the general crisis of capitalism and of the World Revolution.
Should the World Revolution not materialise sixty years after Engels’
prediction and thirty years after Lenin’s and should world capitalism recover
sufficiently from its exhaustion to be able to wage a third world war, what
further laws would be elaborated is difficult to tell.
of technique, means of production— economised— by social labour,
a progressive diminution in the number of the capitalist magnates
and a corresponding increase in the mass of poverty, oppression^
enslavement a working-class which grows ever more numerous,
and ‘is disciplined, unified and organised h}"^ the very mechanism
of the capitalist mode of production.” These Marxist laws of
capitalist development do not merely possess an interest for the
scholar. Although only a few care to read them except as
catechisms and fewer still to understand them as a whole, Social-
ists of all description, ]\Marxists, neo-Marxists, anti-Marxists, base
their thinking and action on one or the other of these laws, parti-
cularly on their source, the general history of the contradiction
between the value and the use-value of labour-power.
A vast literature, confirming or refuting these laws, .has
arisen. It is largely a literature of barren controversy. We must
approach these laws, not to confirm nor to deny, but to understand
the process of capitalist development.
Let us see how far these laws have been unable to include or
have gone against major facts of capitalist development The
first casualty is the law of pauperisation and of accumulating
poverty It would be useless to dem* that, until well after seventy
years of the formulation of this law b}’ Marx and twenty years
after the first formations of the big concentrations of capital, the
proletariat in capitalist countries was not only not pauperised ; not
growing poorer, but was steadily improving its conditions of
lifting. In fact, German economists were able to assert that, in
place of the proletarianisation of the middle-class and the pauperi-
sation of large sections, which Marx had predicted, a steady
bourgeoisification of the proletariat was ta kin g place.* British
economists could point to the black-coated worker. Communists
tried to denj* these facts and formulas by the astrologer s wait-and-
see. There was no such astrological hocus-pocus in Marx’s
formulations. Pauperisation was a necessaxy consequence of
=^The reader must pardon the tkc of these terms which coi^unism
and the German language hare put into the inouth of large numbeis but
which hare no further use except as means of re-education.
176
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
capital accumulation; accumulating poverty was a necessary con-
sequence of monopoly capital: why should thirty years or even
ten elapse before the necessary consequences appear; there must
be a reason for it. In fact, sectional poverty and pauperisation
did appear in the capitalist countries ten years after the end of
the 1914 war, but it was again partly overcome. To say that
capitalist governments overcame poverty by works-programmes
and war-industries is to state a moral fact, but it is no answer
to the “immanent” ability of capitalism to preserve itself from
pauperisation. Socialist theory must be able to pick up these
loose ends, find them a formula and reconcile itself with facts.
This weakness of Marxist theorj' in explaining the absence
of povert}' under capital accumulation has tended to blunt its
understanding of what is otherwise a correct description of the
industrial crises in capitalism. Industry throughout the nineteenth
centurj' suffered from periodic crises, but, quite as periodically,
got out of them. The main Marxist explanation for these crises
as also for their overcoming lies in the internal structure of capi-
talism, the conflict between the improving means of production
and the constant purchasing power.* Is it not possible that, on
*A vast lore has been written on these crises, their periodicity and
nature, their causes and so forth. Attempts have been made to number
these crises and the regular intervals at which they have occured. We
may also not worry overmuch with the University professors’ characterisa-
tion of these as monetary crises, production crisis, crisis in confidence and
so forth, for such categories express external forms and do not go to the
root of the matter. Marx partly goes to the root when be traces these
crises to the conflict between production and consumption, between the
higher yield of mechanised labour-power and the constant or decreasing
total wages of the working-class. But then Mar.x traces the overcoming
of these crises to the same source which is their cause. He and his disciples
emphasise the period of improvement in the means of production, building
better machinefy and so forth, during which goods of consumption do not
immediately appear on the market but wages are still paid. They indeed
drop phrases about the pressing of the peasantry, improvement in agricul-
ture, enmeshing of the whole world in the capitalist net, but these facts
have not been properly digested in the general Marxist theory on industrial
crises. In fact, capitalist politicians and economists have elaborated a
medicine-book for industrial crises and this is none other than the New
Deal, works-programmes, war-industries and, perhaps in an unwilling
measure, war, followed by post-war reconstruction. Quite a few of these
W'orks-programmes like draining of marshes, fighting malaria, building of
town-halls for assemblies do not at all enter the consumption market but
add to the health and entertainment of the people and also pay out wages
177
fragments of a world mind
this basis, capitalism which is said now to have entered its general
crisis may endure in this state as it endured in its periodic crises
and may possibly, while dying out in one country, reappear in
another ?
As to the law of socialised production, it must be admitted that
monopoly capital and large-scale enterprises have appeared, what
has not taken place is the wiping out of the small capitalist. In
fact, the number of small capitalists, either as share-holders in the
large undertakings or as owner-managers of their own, has in-
creased. In the same manner, although socialisation of labour
in the limited sense of thousands of workers working co-operatively
in a single establishment has taken place, what has not taken place
is their unification. Aside from the technical and managerial
classes, the free professions and the clerical classes, the workers
themselves are cut up into a hierarchy of skilled workers, un-
skilled workers, seasonally employed and their differing wages
have turned the predicted solidarity of the working-class into a
piety-reality.*
The worst trick played by history on the Marxist laws of
capitalist development lies in the fact that the Revolution took
place not in Germany,f where it was expected, nor in anjy other
to the labourers. Even among the means of production, a distinction is
made between the machines to manufacture machines which enter into
consumption at a late stage and the machines which do so earlier. The
industry of housing on a capitalist-cum-municipal _ basis can also tide over
a crisis for some time, as it does not immediately enter the market.
Capitalism is groping towards various combinations of industries which
produce no or slow effect on the market. Unless the undigested facts
of socialist theory on crises are properly understood, we are forced to look
upon the capitalist crises, periodic or general, as upon the simple cold,
highly unpleasant but not fatal.
* Of late, books from the Marxist angle have appeared on the treason
of the technical and free professions, salaried classes, the white-collared
worker. Unable to understand as to why they should ty so numerous or
powerful, Marxism in Europe alternates between looking upon them as
an annexe of the bourgeoisie and wooing them as its own allies.
j For seventy years from the publication of the Communist Manifesto
to the Russian Revolution, Marxists including _ Lenin expected the revolu-
tion to take place in western Europe, particularly Germanp An odd
reference by Marx or Lenin to the possibility of a revolution hrst in
Russia or elsewhere is no more than a side-remark. The prophecy was
about Germany and western Europe. For seventj' ye^s, Marxists me
on this prophecy and, after a brief interlude of the Russian revolution,
returned to it again.
178
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
developed country of western Europe, but in Russia. According
to the “immanent laws of capitalist development,” the capitalist
husk was to burst asunder where it proved incompatible with the
socialisation of labour and the concentration of capital. How this law
of the class struggle made an arbitrary leap still remains unex-
plained and undigested by Marxist theory. Trotsky’s explanation
that the capitalist chain snapped at its weakest link is indeed a
graphic phrase, perhaps true, but an entire deriial of the communist
teaching on capitalism. Where is the capitalist chain to break?
At its most developed link, says Marx; at its weakest link, says
Trotsky; and, between these two with various other shades, com-
munism will of course always be right. Lenin’s explanation denies
Marx as much as Trotsky’s does. Lenin explains the Russian
Revolution with the active role of the Bolshevik Party. With
a slight change, in that the Party is now called the Party of Lenin-
Stalin, Marxists have memorised this explanation. How this final
activity of the class struggle flew out of its iron laws, nobody
has cared to explain on any scientific basis. In fact, this was
not necessary, for Soviet Russia and the Third International soon
enough turned their attention again to western Europe as the
centre of the World Revolution. The master’s teaching proved
greater than the big fact of the revolution. Marxists are ap-
parently determined to prove, even at the cost of the World
Revolution itself, that humanity will reach its highest foreseeable
development first in Europe.
Marxism is quite accurate in its findings on capital accu-
mulation, correct from one angle on questions of industrial crises,
of monopoly and socialisation of labour, but factually wrong in
the spheres of accumulating poverty, causal class-struggle and the
World Revolution. Whence comes this conflict between its insight
into production and the blind spots regarding circulation? It is
not as if poverty and pauperism did not arise or that the centres
of class-struggle and world revolution could not be located; it is
also not that Marx and his disciples were unaware of the relevant
facts ; it is this that Marxism was not strong enough to digest these
facts and weave them into its general theory on capitalism. Let
us first get at the relevant facts.
179
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
Capitalism first arose in England during the second half of
the eighteenth century. The pre-capitalist massings of silver were
due as much to the plunder of Spanish ships and Bengal revenues
as to the throwing out of farmers from common lands in Britain
herself. The first industry to employ machiner)’', which is the
technical basis of capitalism, was textiles. Hardly had this
Lancashire industry begun, when it had to look out for a dynamic
outside its own country and found it in India. British textiles
did not overcome Indian textiles in an economic way. When one
of the British parliamentary commissions pointed out that “the
wares of Lancashire were bleached with the dry bones of Indian
weavers,” it did not mean that Indian artisans could not stand
competition with British manufacturers. Aside from whatever
measures were adopted for direct attack upon Indian weavers, the
East India Company and its servants, by taking over the monopoly
of internal trade in their own hands, were able to dictate what
goods shall or shall not flow in the normal trade channels.* The
victory of British textiles over Indian textiles was political; the
dynamic that Lancashire industry, at its very start, got out of
India was due to Britain’s rule. Once again, as soon as the first
heavy industry of rail-and-engine manufacture is set up in England
around the middle of the nineteenth centurj'^, it has to get an
immediate dynamic from India. It gets that not only by way
of the large numbers of engines, rails and other materials used
in India but also by way of capital investments in Indian railways
which beat’ a guaranteed minimum interest.j This dynamic of
*To suggest that machine-manufactuTers must inevitably drive out
hand-manufacturers is here irrelevant. We are concerned with the course
of history as it has actually developed and not as one or the other theoreti-
cian can conceive it to do so. History's record shows that, unsupported by
British rule over India, not the Indian artisans, but the Lancashire
industry would have died in its infancy. ^ _
f This is perhaps the most remarkable piece of financial transaction in
world history, unless another one is in the making, according to which
British investors got a guaranteed half-yearly interest and, whenever
profits rose above this, got them too. Incidentally, the problem is not
as to whether railway development was a boon to India; the fact is that,
without .British-ruled Indian railways, the British railroad industrj" could
180
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
Indian railways has continued to act on British engineering in-
dustries, in fact, on all of British capitalism, through manifold
ways. It need hardly be pointed out that the immense growth
of commercial agriculture in India during the latter part of the
nineteenth century and after, in the shape of jute, tea, cotton,
oilseeds and the by-product of hides, pumped a much-needed
impetus into British capitalism, sometimes by way of the German
and Japanese capitalisms. This commercialisation of agriculture
took place on the imperial-colonial level, on the level of pauper-
wages to landless labour as in Assam and poverty earnings to
farmers as in Bengal, U.P. and Bihar, except in the very limited
case of some cotton farmers. Once again when British capitalism
was faced at the end of the 1914 war with what has come to be
known as a general crisis, Indian railroads alone rushed to its
rescue by ordering goods worth a billion rupees and more.f
This rapid survey of British capitalism has brought us to the
conclusion that imperialism and capitalism are of joint origin and
development. A similar development can be traced through the
career of German capitalism, either by way of sharing in the
Austrian, British and French imperial expansion or on its own.*
On the surface, the American development will seem to have
gone a different way. Actually, capitalist development in the
United States has needed an identical imperial dynamic, has made
use of the same elements as Britain. England used already popu-
hardly have gone beyond an infantile stage. Britain did not give railways
to India; India gave Britain her railways and the engineering industry.
History is full of such truths which seem to go counter to outward
appearances.
t Already, in the midst of the 1939 war, orders for locomotives worth
Rs. 42 crores have been placed and, unless something goes wrong, more
will of course follow.
* The commercial activity of the Hansa towns like Hamburg, as of
the East India Company or of the crafts and guilds is pre-capitalism.
Mar.xists emphasise, and quite properly, that capitalism should not be
confused with other forms of exploitation which might bear some resem-
blance to it. German capitalism begins around the middle of the nineteenth
century with the Customs Union and the Listian economy according to
which free trade has meaning only after unequal historical conditions
have been removed, (to the European, German or British, western Europe
is his world), and it really comes into shape with the Bismarckian unifica-
tion of Germany.
181
Fragments of a world mind
lated countries like India for her • capitalist development. These
two elements, a population and a territory, were similarly made
use of by American capitalism. The territory was new and conti-
g-uous and the population was got from Europe. This territorial
expansion took place over the larger part of the nineteenth century.
To understand this, one has only to look at a map of the United
States as it stood at the beginning and as it got to be at the end
of the nineteenth century. All the Mid- Western States, the
Prairie States, the Border States, the Eastern States, a territory
larger than India, were the result of this expansion.f The
problem of man-power for these large territories was also solved
in an imperial way. No less than thirty million European
paupers! came into the United States during the century and
settled in its factories or on its lands. Each fresh batch of
immigrants stood, at least for a generation, in an imperial-colonial
relationship with the older inhabitants, until it got Americanised.
That imperialism and capitalism have jointly developed in capi-
talist history is clearly established by the American case. The
results of this joint development inside the frontiers of what is
now a single country and a single nation are indeed fundamentally
different from those of the British. How American capitalism
overcame its twin is a brave story of the Jeffersons, Jacksons and
Lincolns, but, whether this was due to the new and robust
American nationality or to the fullness of natural resources and a
corresponding labour yield, and whether this may not yet lead
to an imperial-colonial relationship on a world-scale is not within
our present scope. It need hardly be added that Japanese capi-
talism began as a system of industries rapidly built chiefly out
t The old inhabitants of these territories, the Red Indians, were almost
exterminated in wars and skirmishes. For one big chunk, which was
finally acquired by purchase, the United States President had sent his
negotiators armed, quite in the modem style, with two sets of orders,
to buy if possible, else, to wage a shooting war. ^ . ...
JThe story of these paupers goes counter to Marx’s analysis. Until
capitalism arose in England and France, paupers came prindpally “9^
these two countries. Graphic stories are told of how .British men kid-
napped British women in the streets of London and of marriage-a_t-nrst-
sight bargainings on the New Work Harbour. The growth of rapitalism
in England put an end to it. Then came the turn of Germany, Italy and
Ireland before they turned capitalist. Last came the Slavs. Negro labour
had been brought as slaves in the earlier century.
182
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
of government revenues and it could tlierefoTe wait for two decades
or so before it too went the imperial way.
In face of this wide wealth of facts, how anyone could have
suggested that imperialism is the last stage of capitalism is beyond
comprehension.* Imperialism not only appears at the first stage
of capitalism but goes on developing with it. Capitalism seeks
its external dynamic, one might say, even before it is born and,
unsatiable in this search, it gobbles up one country after another.
First Bengal and the Americas, then the whole of India, and on
to China and Egypt, thence to South America and Malaya and
Java and Burma and the great continent of Africa; the limits of
the world are reached. No single dynamic lasts capitalism for
long; it is soon stabilised and, with an almost magic resourceful-
ness, it uses the old dynamic for the conquest of a new one, Bengal
for United Provinces, India for China and Burma and so forth.
* Lenin has devoted a whole book to the thesis that imperialism is
the last stage of <apitalism. This astounding phrase is meant to convey
the fact of increasing capital investments in the colonies and semi-colonies.
If we limit imperialism to capital investments, what of the factory goods
that capitalism right at its start forced on the colonies and has been doing
so ever since, not to talk of the other tribute of salaries and pensions and
currency tricks. Moreover, even as capital investments go, Britain had
already made the first of these in India around 1850, very much in the
middle stage of her capitalism. Lenin’s tables of statistics of increasing
capital investments in the colonies from decade to decade have no more
than a book-keeping significanc on this issue, for, if colonial investments
have increased, so has capitalist production. Keener students will find
it worth their while to publish the respective ratios of Britain’s total
industrial production to her colonial investments and to her exports in
the decade 1850-60 or 60-70 and also in the decade 1900-10. If Lenin
had made such a study, he would have found that the total volumes of
each of the three categories increase but the ratios are not vastly altered.
Such a misuse of the term imperialism has greatly obscured the fact of
the joint capitalist-imperialist development and, instead of correcting Iklarx’s
theory on capitalism, has further confused it. As a Russian, Lenin was
probably influenced by the fact that his nation’s first contact with capitalism
was by way of west-European investments and he might also have wanted
to give a clever turn to the phrase finance-capital popularised by Hilferding.
Curiously enough, Indian Socialists have also unthinkingly repeated this
phrase. What Lenin and these have probably meant to convey is that
capitalism has already covered the whole world in its net and, therefore,
it must either war and die or find a new dynamic in the more intensive
exploitation of the colonies. It is also possible that, in their anxiety to
discover a proletariat in every country on Marx’s pattern of the class
struggle, they have tended to equate imperialism with large imperialist ,
investments.
183
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
Not only does an old dynamic continue to give capitalism a part
of the needed surplus .for home-production; not only does it
produce armies and war-chests; it also yields labour-power, for
instance, Chinese and Indians in Malaya, Indians in East Africa,
Fiji and such far-off lands as Trinidad. If ever the world is able
to look back upon capitalism and its play-time— the nineteenth
century and after, without the heat of battle, it will contemplate
with wonder this cruel and unscrupulous, nevertheless, the cleverest
scoundrel of all history.
But now the limits of the world are reached. Its unsatiable
expansiveness has come up against a dead wall. How -will it,
or can it at all, solve this contradiction between its expansive
need and a limited world ? But that is a question of its recentmost
development and its future, which we will take up at the proper
place. Meanwhile, let us look at another aspect of the career
of capitalism through history, which is sharply related to this
contradiction. Once upon a time, there was but one capitalism
in the world, Britain’s, for the five decades or so of the 18th and
19th centuries. In its herrscher gait through the world, it showed
its superiority in war and its wealth in peace. It was also willing
to help in the birth of cousins. Culture-capitalisms were born.*
By the first decade of our century, there were four such major
capitalisms besides Britain’s, German, American Japanese and
French. This growth of culture-capitalisms has further sharpened
the conflict between capitalist expansiveness and the limited world.
* Like a culture-pearl, Avhich incidentally is not an artificial pearl,
Capitalism is sterile on colonial soil, whatever be the volume of its trade
with or investments in the colonies ; if this were not so, we should have
had a capitalism much sooner in India than we had it in Japan or Germany
or even the U.S.A. Capitalism sells the machines to manufacture machines
to cousins, that is, to such free countries as have the forces for capitalist
growth; one might almost say that it is conscious of pedigree and wants
no nonsense of half-breeds. That these cousins alternate between being
partners and enemies of each other is rather unfortunate; but it is better
than having a litter of children who might all come of age. But this isct
of culture-capitalisms opens out vistas' of enquiry. Is it possible that
any new system of economy that establishes its superiority in war and
obvious wealth has a tendency to produce cousins? Is it possible that the
submerged countries in any world-phase yearn to produce such_ culture
system? Is it finally possible that even opposing systems, for instancy
the socialist to the capitalist tend to produce culture-pearl traits of each
other ?
184
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
We are thus living in an age which has come to be known as the
epoch of imperialist wars and which, with greater appropriateness,
can be called the epoch of capitalist wars. Can capitalism scotch
the birth of new culture-cousins, can it lay low some of its existing
ones, can the world, instead of going socialist, remain capitalistic
by a process of stagnation or see-saw, are some of the intriguing
questions of future development. For the present, let us weave
the results of our enquiry into a correct theory of capitalist
development. We have found the fact of the joint capitalist-
imperialist development. We have found the fact of the growdh
of culture-capitalisms. We have finally found the fact of multi-
plying capitalisms within a territorially limited imperialism.
The question as to whether capitalism is at all possible without
imperialism may be briefly answered with the strict understanding
that, in history so far, there has been no capitalism without im-
perialism and that, therefore, it relates to the problematic future
and asks for prophesy. Clearly, capitalism, depending upon an
exclusive internal dynamic, theoretically improbable in a vast
country with a vast population, will have to bear two burdens
at the same time, the joint capitalist-imperialist ^burdens. Most
likely, it will crash under these burdens; most certainly, it will
cause an impoverishment on a hitherto unknown scale.
Let us now reconstruct the theory of capitalist development.
Marx’s initial fallacy was to have examined capitalism in the
abstract, to have wrenched it outside of its imperialist context.
Marx was not unaware of imperialist exploitation and his disciple,
Lenin, was even more keenly aware of it. But imperialism is
with either a tumour of capitalism, an odorous after-growth and
this has at best awakened an unintelligent concern for the colonial
races. Marxism has therefore not been able to give a consistent
theory of capitalist development. Its picture of capitalism is that
of a west European entity, with the later additions of the American
and Japanese ones, more or less wrenched out of the world, more
or less developing internally. All the dynamic of capitalism is
placed within its internal structure, in the contradiction between
the value and the use-value of labour-power, between the working-
185
KRAGilEXTS OF A V.'OEI-D
class and the capitalist-class of the self-same structure. Slarx’s
capitalism -was that of a self-moidng- west-European circle, no
doubt causing- great repercussions in the outside -vrorld, but the
principle and lav,'S of its ov,-n movement vrere exclusivel_v internal.
Marxism to this da}- remains stuck in this picture, no doubt
formulating lavrs about these outside repurcussions, but is v,-holl}-
unable to state the basic interacting principle of the tK'o, internal
and external, movements of capital. Socialism must forever
shatter this unreal Marxist picture. In its place must arise a
picture of two circles, one placed inside the other, the inner circle
representing the free capitalist structures with their d}'namic in
the contradiction bebveen capitalist profits and mechanised labour,
the other circle representing the colonial econom\' of the rest of
the world with its dj-namic between imperial exploitation and
colonial labour, the rim of the inner circle possessing an enor-
mously porous capacit}' to suck into itself the dj-namic of the outer.
This is the onl}- way in which we can join up the capital-labour
d3'iiamic with the empire-colony dynamic and arrive at a consistent
understanding of the development of capitalism.*
The Communist theorj' of capitalist development starts -with
the contradictio?! between the value and the use-value of lahom
and with the surplus value thus generated. The career of this
surplus value reveals the further laws of capitalist development
All this needs to be restated, in the light of our investigations,
both as to labour’s value and its use-value. Labom is not an
abstract something, although Marx made it so. In spite ot their
horror of idealistic concepts. Communists have continued to treat
labour as an ideal, abstract entit}*. Actually, labour under capi-
talism has shov.-n two forms, which differ so -^ridely irom each
other, that lumping them up imder one category can never give
* Sonie persons will here remark that the two dynamics are present
in Marxist studies of capitalism. Nobody questions that. The issue is
whether the tivo dj-namics are so inter-^nnected pd the basic laws or
this interconnection so discovered as to give a consistent understandmg or
the world. It is this interconnection that socialism must stuay. tor a
type of intellect which can only be satisfied bj* crude evalu<iiJons, Ct i
be said here that, among- all other Europeans, Karl Marx is the g-ea
economist of European history. But -we must not be satisfied -wii-h tnat,
for we need the economics of vrorld history.
186
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
US a proper understanding. Labour has been either imperial or
colonial and there have been vast divergences in their values. It
is for these divergences that communism has had to evolve the
concept of the socially effective requirements of labour. But its
basic concept of the necessary requirements of labour* has stood
* University economics has tried to understand the present distribution
of wealth among various countries of the world and is preserving this
understanding with the help of a few concepts. Let us examine the major
concepts.
(a) Necessary Requirements of Labourl The requirements of labour
are supposed to vary from country to country. Colder climates like those
of England and Germany are believed to necessitate richer food, better
housing, more numerous clothing and so forth than tropical climates like
in Africa and India. As a result of these higher calories of food and
so forth, labour in colder climates is also believed to be more productive.
Thus, the teaching has sprung up of the greater productivity as also the
greater requirements of labour in colder climates. This teaching is wholly
erroneous. There is no reason why the German should not be able to do
with the food of the Tibetan and carry a charcoal-firestove bound to his
back or live the winters of his entire life-time in a single Eskimo coat.
There is likewise no reason why the Indian can naturally labour without
electric fans and air-conditioning and fruit juice and such like nourishing
food to fight the rigours of a tropical sun. If climate has any economic
relevance, the coal fire and central heating of colder climates has its
opposite number in the fans and air-conditioning of warmer climates, the
heavy meat-and-drink diet, in the fruit-and-milk diet, so that one might
legitimately say that the requirements of labour in warmer climates arc
naturally higher than those in colder climates. But, to be able to say
that, one would require an excess of political power in warmer climates
as compared to that in colder. In fact, Europeans have in the past been
able to do with Eskimo coats and without baths and the like. Quite
obviously, therefore, there is no such thing as the necessary requirements
of labour; there are only such requirements as varying political fortunes
have bestowed upon this country or that. The Indian peasant who is today
supposed naturally to sleep in the open and work may as naturally be
supposed, in a different political climate, to require for his labour a pucca
house lighted and ventilated by electricity. This brings us on to the
question of what labour produces.
(b) Productivity of Labour: The teaching that credited labour in
colder countries with a higher productivity by virtue of the climate itself
is so patently untrue that it has almost been given up. It is now clothed
in different garments. Such concepts as the lack of proper food or of
training and skill are introduced to explain the low produce of colonial
labour. Indian economists and businessmen make free use of these con-
cepts. When, for instance, the low yield of the Indian steel worker is
compared with the high yield of the British steel worker, this is naturally
put down to the ill-fed and ill-trained condition of the former. Tlius
do our capitalists and economists hide their own shame and dishonour.
For the west-European capitalist cconomj’, Karl Marx proved conclu-
sively, that the concepts of skilled and unskilled labour are highly
transitory, what is skilled today ma3' become unskilled tomorrow and the
187
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
labour that can be got dirt-cheap todaj- mas' require good rrages tomorrow
Let us look at our own_ nckshaw-driver. It is difficult to imagine a more
exacting or a more skilled labour. In like manner, if there were =ome
way to me^me the labour power spent b3- the Indian metal-worker'' and
by bis Bnbsh opposite number, it will be found that the former has
^ e.xacting labour. The economic fact is that the
ill-fed Indian worker or peasant has to do as exacting a labour, in <: aria-haspopup="true" class="goog-spellcheck-word" id=":dh.2679" role="menuitem" span="" style="background: yellow;" tabindex="-1">ome</:></pre>
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rases even more, and spend as much of his muscle-power as the better-fed
British worken Is it then the higher skill of the Eurojiean labourer that
does the trick? We have alread3' commented upon the skill of the rick-
shaw driver, than which there can be nothing higher in the steel-industry.
The motor or bus driver in India is certainly as skilled as his opposite
num^r in Europe. Perhaps what is meant is a particular tj-pe of skull
required for a particular tj’pe of machinerj-, there being no suggestion
that anyone is higher than the other. Even here, it will be difficult to
prove how the skill of the rivet-driver in our country differs from that
of the ^British. kkTiat may be possible is that adaptation to a particular
kind of machinery' may require a few years so that labour that has the
earlier 'run enjoys a short-lived advantage. But conditions are soon
equalised. Therefore, the concept of ill-fed and ill-skilled labour as an
explanation of the low produce in our industry uses as much, it not more,
of muscle-power and skill as labour elsewhere. Is it then their own
incompetence which Indian capitalists seek to transfer to our labour?
(c) Capitalist Enterprise: Capacity to mix in the most pr^ofitable
proportions the three factors of production, land, labour and capital and
the readiness to take risks or to break out into une.xplored regions of
technique and industry are regarded as a part of the entrepreneur’s skill
in text-book economics. Aside from the question why this skill should
get higher profits than, say, the skill of the school-teacher, it would be
■whollj' absurd to suggest that the entrepreneur’ s skill in the more
important countries is of higher or lov/er orders. The Indian capitalist
is as skilful in the selection of sites for his industries and in marketing
as the European, if anj'thing, he is even more skilled in the manipulation
of labour. He can also take enormous risks as evidenced bj' his bold
speculations. This teaching of enterpreneurs skill, whate\-er may be its
role in the internal economy of a country, has absolutely no meaning when
applied to distinguish one important country from another. W'hat has
meaning is another concept, a country’s total economic structure which
is naturallj' dependent upon its politics. This explains that the Indian
capitalist, while he takes the most fantastic risks in commercial specula-
tion, is wholb' crippled v.hen it comes to brealdng out into new techniques
and industry. On industrial risks, he is as dishonourable as the tortoise,
probably because he knows that the moment he takes out his head he will
be decapitated. It is to this dishonour of a colonial economic structure and,
not to the supposed lower 5'’ield or the lower needs of our labour nor
to entrepreneur’s skill, that our low economic productiviri' should be
traced.
(d) National Resources : Attempt is often made to refer to a countrj- s
natural resources to explain and justify what in imiversity economics is
known as the geographical division of labour. For inst^ce, the prcicnce
of humidity in the Lancashire atmosphere and, therefore, ilMchestra
textiles are brought in some sort of a mutually beneficial connertion^with
the cottton growing black-soil of Maharashtra. The actual use or artificial
sprays in Indian textile mills has completely busted up this connection.
188
ECOXOMICS AFTER MARX
for the cost of these sprays is not even an infinitesimal fraction of the
earlier two-way freight charges. This does not however mean that there
is no such thing as differing natural resources. It is to these resources
that the United States owes, in part, its preponderant position in the world;
with six per cent of the world’s population, it controls nearly tiventj'five
per cent of the world’s resources. Here again one has to be very careful.
The factor of scientific inventiveness can almost equalise the differing
natural resources. The present estimate of a countrj'’s resources is made
on basis of materials such as coal, iron, petrol, water-power and so forth,
which have already acquired key-importance. But one can depend on
science to produce petrol out of coal and sugar out of wood and, if these
ersatz industries may with some reason be regarded as a waste in the
perspective of world-economy, there are remarkable new inventions such
as plastics or electronics which open out the prospect of wholly new
industries. Firmly entrenched vested interests of iron and steel in the
already industrialised countries may make it impossible for the plastics
industry to grow, whereas another country with less resources in iron may
develop this nhv industry with great profit to itself. Scientific inventive-
ness can thus add to the great varietj' of key natural resources and equalise
the differences among various countries. No doubt, applied science will
have to be more alert and alive and diversified as between one country
and another than it has so far been; it must not blindly follow already
explored lines. In this way, differences in natural resources can be
equalised and a countrj', poor on, the present showing, may even aspire
to gain a lead, however short-lived, over others. In order tliat we can
have a really beneficial world-trade and obtain a true teaching of the
geographical division of labour, science must get an unfettered scope in
various parts of the world and also make an intelligent, human use of
its possibilities. Until this is done, text-book teaching on natural resources
must be viewed with suspicion and be looked upon as_ a justification of
existing geographical division of labour, that is, of the imperial structures
on the one hand and colonial structures on the other.
We have found that the concepts of the nccessarj' requirements of
labour, of the productivity of labour, of capitalist skill and of natural re-
sources, when used to distinguish one country from another, are either
meaningless or harmful to proper understanding. To understand world
economy, as it is and as it has travelled through the past two centuries,
we would need such concepts as the politically effective requirements of
labour, the productivity of the total economic structure, the imperial-
colonial division of labour.
What we have hitherto had as the science of economics is nothing
else but the rules of accountancy, industrial management, trade and banking.
The science of economics is yet to mature. This is further illustrated
b 3 ' the pitiful use that economics makes of statistics.
Fairlj’ copious statistics are now available of the total annual pro-
duction in various countries, their national incomes, foreign trade, capital
investments and so forth. What docs economics do with them? It just
establishes surface ratios. For instance, we know that, in a normal year,
20 per cent of Britain’s production enters into e.xport trade, around 3 per
cent comes to India, the total of investment dividends and home charges
going out of India do not make more than 2 or 3 per cent of Britain’s
national income. According to these surface calculations, India contributes,
at best, a _S per cent to Britain’s national income. The politician, Mr.
Churchill, is nearer the truth than these calculations of economists are.
189
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
when he puts down India’s contribution to Britain’s national income around
15 to 20 per cent. In fact, it might even be more. For Mr. Churchill
IS aware that money-expressions of economic values greatly obscure the
dynamics that go on underneath, that the loss of dynamic in one region
leads to losses m other regions and so forth.
Let us evaluate the statistics of India’s foreign trade as the science
of eronomics ought to. We would find that, in a normal year, 5000 crores
of labour-hours spent on our farms and fields are exchanged for 250 crores
of labour-hours spent in British factories. The German and Japanese
factories have also their share. These calculations are easily made. If,
out of our production estimated at Rs. 2,000 crores in a normal year’
Rs. 100 crores worth of agricultural goods enter our export trade, l/20th
of our entire population, that is, 2 crores of men have been at the job of
producing these exported goods. For the purpose of ensuring complete
comparison, the entire population and not the working population is here
regarded. At the estimate of 2,500 labour-hours per man per’ year, we
get a total of 5,000 crore labour-hours spent on the production of our
exported agricultural goods. Likewise, if out of the British production
estimated at Rs. 4,000 crores in a normal year Rs. 100 crores worth of
industrial goods enter the export trade, l/40th of the British population,
that is 10 laklis of men have been at the job of producing these exported
goods. Thus 250 crores of labour-hours are spent on the production- of
these industrial goods imported into India. This is the real story, which
money statistics of India’s foreign trade are so shy of revealing, that the
labour of 2 crores of men is exchanged against that of 10 lakhs of men,
5,000 crores of labour-hours are exchanged for 250 crores of labour-hours.
It will not do to summon the exploded concepts of labour productivity or
of natural resources to explain this fantastic exchange. The concept of
the imperial-colonial division of labour, of the productivity of the total
economic structure, alone can explain it. Behind this fantastic exchange,
lies the history of layer upon layer of saved labour from generations of
tillers and miners of India, China, Java, Malaya, Africa, South America
and other lands, which has continually been converted into the gigantic
machines of England, Germany and Japan.
How then to disentangle the two surplus values, that which capitalism
extracts from labour in its home factories and that which it extracts from
colonial labour? There is so much of history, so much of continually
changing dynamics wrapped up with this problem that one despairs of
evolving an adequate mathematical formula. And yet, cannot perhaps this
terrific flux of surplus value be grasped by a simple formula, if we bear
in mind that labour’s use of muscle-power and sldll is the same all the
world over and, granted equal conditions of technique, would yield equal
produce. In fact, university economists who believe in exchange of equal
values should have no difficulty in accepting this formula. Let us then
convert the world’s entire production of a year into the currency of any
one country. Care should be taken to convert not the nominal values, but
the real values. We may then divide this production equally among the
world’s working population. For the rough calculation that follows the
world’s entire population is taken into account. In our own
this would roughly work out at Rs. 100 per head per year Whoever
receives less than this as his income and to the extent that he does so,
man, woman, or their child, is a contributor to the surplus value of capi-
talism ; whoever receives more than this, and to the exteih that e oes
so, is a receipient. This will perhaps show that nearly 99 per cent ot
190
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
in the way and prevented a richer understanding of the newer
and correct concept. There are no necessary requirements of
labour, at least, they have no economic relevance except in periods
of famine. Human labour has shown a remarkable tenacit}’- to
live and U^ork and its requirements have varied from the minimum
of 2 annas a day for colonial labour to that of Rs. 4 a day for
imperial labour. This shows that requirements of labour are
dictated, not by nature or physique, but by history.
Historical development has dictated that a colonial labourer
shall keep himself upon the brink of starvation and work, while
nature has shown its marvellous elasticity in how very little is
needed to keep a man alive and enable him to turn up for work
day after day. We thus find that there are two distinct values
or wages of labour, those effective in the imperial countries and
those effective in the colonies. This distinction between imperial
labour and colonial labour and their respective wages is of the
utmost importance for a proper understanding of the source of
surplus value. Likewise, the concept of the use-value, the pro-
duce, of labour remains abstract and meaningless unless it is
understood in the context of joint capitalist-imperialist develop-
ment. In the current produce of labour in west-European
factories appears the saved labour of many generations of colonials.
Economists, including Communists, are wrong in crediting this
entire produce to imperial labour and in using pompous phrases
about the higher productivity of labour in Europe as compared
colonial labour and not more than 10 per cent of imperial labour is the
victim from whom capitalism extracts its profits, although, perhaps another
10 per cent of imperial labour lives on the margin. The accountants,
misnamed economists, will perhaps wilt at this calculation. They might
suggest that this calculation steps up India’s production exactly double
by a magician's trick and it makes appear two where there is only one.
They have to be reminded that the one their eyes are unable to
see has from generations been crossing India’s frontiers and appearing
in the product of west-European and Japanese factories. They have also
to be reminded that the spending of muscle-power and skill is the same
all tlie world over and, if it today yields less in India, China or Africa,
that is because its previous yields of many generations lie congealed in
the machines of other lands.
We can now define surplus value. Labour, whether of the peasant
or the factory worker, creates surplus value to the extent that its earnings
fall below the average per worker world production of its time.
191
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
to Asia or Africa. Labour, on the whole, uses the same muscle-
power and skill everywhere and, what appears as the higher produce
of imperial labour, is directly due to the many generations of
imperial-colonial division of labour in the world. One might
almost say that the ghosts of hundreds of millions o? colonial
toilers are invisibly moving the machines in imperial factories.
The highly elaborate machinery, and its continuing improvement
in capitalist countries, is due, in large part, to the surplus value
created on colonial firms and mines. The continuing use of the
productive capacity of these factories is also due, in large part,
to the vast masses of colonial toilers who buy their produce. In
this welter of a current production that carries with it many
entangled skeins of history and of two distinctive values of labour,
the old formula that capitalist development has proceeded with
the contradiction between labour’s wages and its produce has
become meaningless.
If capitalism has extracted surplus value from its home
labourers by paying them' less than what they produce, upon this
extraction has continually acted the far greater surplus value
derived from colonial toilers. Do the immensely rich persons and
the vast middle classes of England and Germany, receive surplus
value from home-labour or from colonial labour and in what
ratios ? Does not imperial labour itself, at least some of its better-
paid ranks, receive a large measure of surplus value extracted
from colonial labour? There seems to be only one way to get
out of this labyrinth. We must forever abandon the habit of'
examining a country’s economic structure as a self-moving entity ;
we must therefore abandon the Marxist understanding of capi-
talism as a self-moving west-European entity. Capitalism from
its origin to its xecentmost development has moved mainly on the
imperial dynamic. So that we may evolve a formula which may
grasp at the same time the internal and external dynamics of
capitalism, we have to give up the idea of an isolated produce of
labour within a single economic structure and replace instead the
concept of the world’s total production averagely distributed over
its working population. Thus, the contradiction shall be, not
between labour’s requirements and its produce, but between the
192
politically Qff . 4PJ,
va7ue ^^°^»ction of?/ „? (?oes\
-4p:rr--H
Pl'icatlyj 'he out. “ 'O drf’"** ‘‘'"'e of th” “'onfaj
r "'-^ceru Z % '» " 0 ,.^?'‘ '■” '»'o»\, °'’" “-fa o„t°” **'
« CO? ou^/ ^°‘''' distil?, gra-
- “'la,! rr"''^Sz- ^Sor'T"''
just a slio-uf^^^od the and ’ ^ eguap ^^otion
of tu "^dy /e ^ primary opt, f ^‘^c/7 lo^^ ^ }^y broad
^4suZ"'f'’ =12™'
^PitalisfQ ' ii^ast com ^bich altem ^onjes thp ^ ^^^ked
Outer co/n • ^oa.lity ^r . ^ -^ate ^fg streak c ^ng
^''^"onn-c c/rc//'/^^ ^°or of
blit /rioi ^ avcj-y^ ^ to which v ^ ^r>yes n- T/uV
°'''^^rn,o??''^'^^3rJvar?“‘^^'°" <^oel ? ^^^^c/jerf ^.^Vunct of
'wt/j of /and/ess
^^ouon7/eo f tones ? and ! fs rlu^bout
are as nofi • re/af,- ^ ^dla^p . “ ^ani/np t>, PiVed
'" "-Wc/, ,1'"^ “mparedT'"'’® “f evpl?' “"Pitafet^^' «>'on/a(
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J3 ° ^
193
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
this instruiDent of an intcnvovsn inner and outer
dj naniic, m e are in a position to understand tVie other appearances
of capitalist dei elopnient. In particular, the high capitalisation
of west-European industn- is made intelligible. This industry’
has not only continuall}' got the larger part of its capital from
overseas profits, but it has continually found overseas outlets for
its produce in goods as well as its capital acounulations. Thanks
to the fact that corresponding industries could not be established
in the major part of the world, west-European industry' could
capitalise itself so higlilv, could become unmistakably monopolistic.
The west-European population could never have borne the burden
of this heai”}’ capitalisation, could neither have created it nor
carried it through, not even if they could have distributed their
produce on a communist basis.
Just as this hea\y capitalisation is the outcome largely of
overseas d3’namic, the overcoming of the periodic crises is to be
traced to the same source. To say that industrial crises are caused
by the lag between a people’s production and their purchasing
power or that they are overcome by inventions and heSjWer
capitahsation is to state some half-truths and ourivard appearances.
Industrial crises, in addition to being a partial result of the capi-
talist distribution of internal incomes, have more largely been due <pre style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Monaco, Menlo, Consolas, "Courier New", monospace; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.42857; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 9.5px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-break: break-all; word-wrap: break-word;">to tlie time-lag between the exhaustion of an old imperial d^mamic
and the discover}* of a new one. An old technique of producing
goods with a given o^'erseas area for imperialist exploitation tends
to produce crisis, until a new overseas area is conquered to enable
the use of a new invention.* Thus wzs it possible for capitahsm
* If an attempt were made to pair off Stephenson’s steam-engine or the
Bessemer process or the internal comb'astion engine with such events as
the conquest of Bengal or the opening of the Suez canal and the consequent
commercialisation of Indian agriculture or the conquest _ of Atrica. the
results would prove that a crisis set in largely as old colonial areas started
proving inadequate and capitalism got restored to health with pey political
or economic ^annexations. Incidentallj*, this _ theorv* of cypitahst
might mean that such hea^w capitalisation as in_ European industry wo*a-d,
even under socialist conditions, be impossible without imperialist exploita-
tion. We would consider this question later. _
P;S . — 1 have now come to belie\*e in the utter impossibihty m suca
heai*y capitalisation for the whole world, not alone because of Jie ua-
194
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
to survive its first crisis and its later periodic crises, for, the inter-
nal purchasing power could in no event have sufficed for its
produce. Thus is it that, with the complete conquest of the world
and the impossibility of a new imperial dynamic, capitalism has
entered the phase of general crisis. It is wholly unable to get
out of this phase. Whether it will as a result break asunder or
stabilise itself at low levels of wealth will be considered later.
Capitalist crises are often sought to be understood in terms
of the rise or fall in the rate of interest. As an outward ap-
pearance, it is incontestable that crisis is a period of very low
outturns on capital, that is, almost negligible rates of interest,
while boom is a period of high outturns. It is also true that, after
a period of abnormally low outturns, a new invention for the
production of goods used to bring a higher yield on capital. A
new composition of capital and labour took place. But this is
merely touching the surface of the problem of crises or, even, of
the rate of interest. Going deeper, we are offered such explana-
tions as that new inventions caused a fall in the costs of production
and the price of goods and, with the increase in population, this
gave higher profits to capitalists and thus restored equilibrium.
This is yet not a full explanation. Each boom-making utilisation
of new inventions and the consequent fall in the costs of produc-
tion was possible only with the fresh markets of large overseas
populations for trade as well as investments. It was this that
restored capitalist equilibrium and profits and the new restorations
tended to be on lower levels of interest. With the possibility of
such new restorations now blocked, capital is faced with the
problem of a zero or a minus rate of interest. Capital is faced
with its own extinction. This is the' problem of the general crisis
of capitalism.
While capitalism has progressed through periodic crises in
its homelands, it has brought devastating paupery and increasing
poverty to the colonies. Landless and starving labour in agricul-
availability of imperialist exploitation, but also because most of the
retarded two-thirds of the world possesses a tremendous density of
population. 1952.
195
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
With this instrument of an interwoven inner and outer
dynamic, we are in a position to understand the other appearances
of capitalist development. In particular, the high capitalisation
of west-European industrj^ is made intelligible. This industry
has not only continually got the larger part of its capital from
- overseas profits, but it has continuall}'^ found overseas outlets for
its produce in goods as well as its capital accumulations. Thanks
to the fact that' corresponding industries could not be established
in the major part of the world, west-European industry could
capitalise itself so highly, could become unmistakably monopolistic.
The west-European population could never have borne the burden
of this heavy capitalisation, could neither have created it nor
carried it through, not even if they could have distributed their
produce on a communist basis.
Just as this heavy capitalisation is the outcome largely of
overseas dynamic, the overcoming of the periodic crises is to be
traced to the same source. To say that industrial crises are caused
by the lag between a people’s production and their purchasing
power or that they are overcome by inventions and hea.vier
capitalisation is to state some half-truths and outward appearances.
Industrial crises, in addition to. being a partial result of the capi-
talist distribution of internal incomes, have more largely been due
to the time-lag betw'een the exhaustion of an old imperial dynamic
and the discovery of a new one. An old technique of producing
goods -with a given overseas area for imperialist exploitation tends
to produce crisis, until a new overseas area is conquered to enable
the use of a new invention.* Thus was it possible for capitalism
* If an attempt were made to pair off Stephenson’s steam-engine or the
Bessemer process or the internal combustion engine with such events as
the conquest of Bengal or the opening of the Suez canal and the consequent
commercialisation of Indian agriculture or the conquest _ of Africa, the
results would prove that a crisis set in largely as old colonial areas started
proving inadequate and capitalism got restored to health with new political
or economic /annexations. Incidentally, this; .theory' of rapitalist crises
might mean that such heavy capitalisation as in European mdustry would,
even under socialist conditions, be impossible without imperialist exploita-
tion. We would consider this question later. _
p,S. — I have now come to believe in the utter impossibility' ch such
hea\'y capitalisation for the whole world, not alone because of the un-
194 -
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
to survive its first crisis and its later periodic crises, for, the inter-
nal purchasing power could in no event have sufficed for its
produce. Thus is it that, with the complete conquest of the world
and the impossibility of a new imperial dynamic, capitalism has
entered the phase of general crisis. It is wholly unable to get
out of this phase. Whether it will as a result break asunder or
stabilise itself at low levels of wealth will be considered later.
Capitalist crises are often sought to be understood in terms
of the rise or fall in the rate of interest. As an outward ap-
pearance, it is incontestable that crisis is a period of very low
outturns on capital, that is, almost negligible rates of interest,
while boom is a period of high outturns. It is also true that, after
a period of abnormally low outturns, a new invention for the
production of goods used to bring a higher yield on capital. A
new composition of capital and labour took place. But this is
merely touching the surface of the problem of crises or, even, of
the rate of interest. Going deeper, we are offered such explana-
tions as that new inventions caused a fall in the costs of production
and the price of goods and, with the increase in population, this
gave higher profits to capitalists and thus restored equilibrium.
This is yet not a full explanation. Each boom-making utilisation
of new inventions and the consequent fall in the costs of produc-
tion was possible only with the fresh markets of large overseas
populations for trade as well as investments. It was this that
restored capitalist equilibrium and profits and the new restorations
tended to be on lower levels of interest. With the possibility of
such new restorations now blocked, capital is faced with the
problem of a zero or a minus rate of interest. Capital is faced
with its own extinction. This is the problem of the general crisis
of capitalism.
While capitalism has progressed through periodic crises in
its homelands, it has brought devastating paupery and increasing
poverty to the colonies. Landless and starving labour in agricul-
availability of imperialist c.^ploitation, but also because most of the
retarded two-thirds of the world possesses a tremcridous density of
population. 1952.
195
:XTS OF A WORLD iriND
tare hzs claimed an increasingly higher percentage in the total
population. Because of their basic misunderstanding- of the
dy i: Sm iC ox capicalism. ^larxists have looked lor increasing
impoverishment among imperial labour, vrhereas they should have
looked for it in colonial labour. The histoxv' of capitalist develop-
ment is the history- of the increasing poverty of colonial masses
and their reduction into starving and landless labour.*
The worst sufferers under capitalism are the colonial masses.
Presuming the validity ot the Communist law of class-struggle,
there is obvious need to change its basis. Xot the worldng class
in capitalist countries, but the colonial masses are the princiosl
* J~zr.( 2 l£<s aria-haspopup="true" class="goog-spellcheck-word" id=":dh.4847" role="menuitem" span="" style="background: yellow;" tabindex="-1">izbz'jT</s></pre>
Indian agricalture has risen frcm beine less than
ZCO _cf eacii iKO k agricnlWrists at the end of the last centnr:.- to neariv
-M in ^ch 1C'>3. i his is the most hnportant result of the ccnnnerdalisatiGn
of agriculture. Xe".‘ertheles$, men can stiit talk that India has been
enriched unrcugh ccmme.'rial agriculture. It would be hard to Snd a
more obvious stream of blood that has Sown from a huge mass of popula-
tion to a foreign economy or to a section in its own. Tne receivers of
this stream alone can talk of the enriching of 'the people free: whom it is
talien. mere is no greater collapse of hum.an intelligence than when an
Indian or any ether colonial repeats parrot-ISie the Ifarxist formtda that
capitalism was at one time progressive but has now ceased to be so.
Capitalism has at no time been progressive to the colonial masses; it has
increasingly vrasted their economic and spiritual welfare. If only so-me one
with s:.-mpathy and a historical sense could write “the Kistety of Colonial
Labour in India”, it would not only be a service to knowledge but would
read like a thriller. The materiais of such a history may have to be found
in the indenture records of such far-ori lands as Fiji and Trinidad; th^
vriii teve to be ferreted out of the numerous British commissions and
reports; old budgets and prices will have to be discovered and. in part,
the;.- may have to be reconstructed out of such evidence as is available
frem men who are before our eyes fading into skeletons. This might take
a whole lifetim.e. but it will be a great w-ork. Such a history will relate
the rec-eated auctionings of Bengal lands by Hastings, the speedy reduction
of craftsmen into landless labourers, the cry for salt and oil. labour's work
on rail embanlunents and roads to be followed b;,- successive gazes cn
its hc-eded fields and its own creation, the story of its fascinating women
Guickiy fading into wvinkles and gawlnness or o* a rare Sower picked vp
by the zamindar's son and tl:e indigo saheb only to be thrown away, tae
occasional revclts, the resignaticn and pain ot indenture slaves c-n ramsnackle
ships and cn lands thousands of miles atvay. the arrival of jute and tea
and cotton with -Bessemer and the Suez canal wttn^ them — fee piteous cry
for food, famines, the stiSed moan, the wondrous victory ^of rite Icfn doth
over naJiedness. the background o; the huge lactones tn loreign lanos s^d
tlisir' sos.vrn5 in SomLjs'v. CslcnttH. sun i2kcr toxviis 'tnrousn dl
story of vanishing fc-cd and vanishine doth, rnnnmg Ime a red thread, tim
disgrace of caste and the songs of Paltu ana other Bnagats feat spOKe of
the dissolving hatrainess in the Great Aosolute,
196
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
grave-diggers of capitalism. Imperial labour can at best be an
ally of colonial toilers in the destruction of capitalism. The class
of colonial toilers’*" pours its life-blood into the capitalist system
from its birth, carries it along through its various phsases and is
itself steadily impoverished, until it reaches a stage when its own
extinction spells the decay of capitalism, while its purposeful rise
into manhood ushers a new world. Whether the class of colonial
toilers will do its work well or ill, whether it will allow itself to
stay in decay or rise into manhood, will be discussed under the
recentmost development of capitalism. Suffice it here to say that
the future of capitalism depends not so much on the behaviour
of labour in capitalist countries as on the behaviour of colonial
masses. The student of capitalist future will have his eyes pre-
eminently on the political action of colonial toilers.
The Russian Revolution fits in very well with this theory of
the class-struggle. As a country which by no means formed part
of the inner capitalist circle of world-economy but was being
gradually brought into the outer colonial circle of the west-
Europeans, its semi-colonial toilers were yet powerful enough to
overthrow the foreign and native systems that spelt their ser\’itude.
The capitalist chain snapped where the colonial masses supplied
their strongest link. Those desirous of seeing the capitalist chain
break again will do well to look for the now strongest link in the
class of colonial toilers. Such a breaking may perhaps usher in
a real new world, as the snapping link is now no longer semi-
colonial but wholly colonial and vitally necessary to capitalist
continuance.
Before we go on to consider the recentmost development of
capitalism, let us ask ourselves how Marx could have made an
inadequate use of his own instrument and have considered capita-
lism in its west-European isolation. One is tempted to answer
in the Marxian way that, as a limb of European economy, Marx
\
* Whatever Marxists may say about the impossibility of regarding the
colonial toilers as a single class, even under Marx's tests of community,
political consciousness and national organisation, the colonial toilers as a
whole are more justifiably a class than is the working class of capitalist
countries.
197
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
could not see beyond the interests of the European working-class.
As a philanthropist, lie vaguely wanted the.whole world to prosper,
but the centre of his world with its deciding movements for eco-
nomic and spiritual welfare was placed in west-Europe. This
view is further confirmed by the attitude of Marx’s critics. They
have attacked Marx’s theorj’- of capitalist development from various
•angles such as marginal utilit)<- a="" alike="" also="" always="" an="" and="" argument="" aria-haspopup="true" as="" asiatic="" be="" been="" but="" call="" can="" capitalism="" capitalist="" capitalists="" class="goog-spellcheck-word" colonial="" communists="" consequences="" conspiracy="" costs="" creator="" development="" division="" down="" economic="" error="" even="" factories.="" forces.="" great="" has="" have="" id=":dh.5387" imperial="" in="" interests="" into="" it="" its="" labour="" lapses="" laws="" looking="" maintained="" marx="" need="" none="" not="" of="" one="" only="" or="" out="" over="" own="" party="" perhaps="" phases.="" pointed="" preference="" production="" proves="" put="" recent="" reflection="" role="menuitem" scales="" self-interest="" silence="" singular="" socialists="" sole="" span="" style="background: yellow;" tabindex="-1" tempted="" that="" the="" them="" thinking="" this="" thought="" through="" to="" upon="" value="" various="" west-europe="" working="" would="">appropriately</->
studied by analysing west-European economy after the first
decade of our centur3^ Apart from the fact that west-Europe
until recently decided the destiny of more than half of the human
race and was consequently the main determinant in affairs of
capitalism, it has, during this period, had the strength to involve
the whole world in two major Avars. In the study of west-
European economy, Ave Avill be concerned Avith economic facts, as
the thoughts and motives of men, except in so far as they are of
economic consequence, Avill be studied in another connection.
The main source of Avest-European economic movement m
this period has lain in the extremely heaA'y capitalisation of industry
and in the fact of multiplying capitalisms Avithin a territorially
blocked imperialism. The capitalisation of Avest-European in-
dustr}^ had, until the first decade of our century, proceeded on the
basis of CA^er-available large chunks of colonial masses and their
territories; it needed an expanding AA’’orld on Avhich to operate.
The source of such an expansion, is noAv completely blocked.
198
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
There are no more new worlds whose colonial masses can act as
a dynamic to west-European capitalisation. On the contrary,
a kind of diminishing returns has begun to operate in the available
spheres because of the increasing poverty of colonial masses as
well as their obstruction and opposition. All this has produced
a chronic condition in west-European capitalisation; not only
has industry reached the summit of its capacity and can no longer
expand but it cannot make use of whatever capacity it has already
reached. The use of productive capacity fell in the five years of
the 1929 depression to nearly three-fourths and, in certain indus-
tries, it was as low as fifty per cent. Even in the five years
immediately preceding the 1939 war, Britain and France could not
make full use of their productive capacities. This downward trend
in the use of productive capacity was accompanied by downward
trends in world trade and employment.* West-European capi-
talism has thus been faced by three kinds of insecurities to its
existence; insecurity due to colonial poverty and obstruction,
insecurity of internal disorders and insecurity as a result of
competition within its own ranks and from extra-European lands.
Due perhaps to a doom that will not release^ it from its coils,
west-Europe has been wholly unable to meet, except in a hand-
yo-mouth fashion, the insecurity of colonial poverty and obstruc-
tion that most threatens its existence. Out of fear and a kind
of obsessed thinking, its conscious talk has been largely influenced
by the internal conflict bet^veen capital and labour. In actual
practice, however, and so far as vital consequences are concerned,
the insecurity that has moved west-European capitalism in its
entire being is the competition within its own ranks. Twice in
the course of a generation, it has sought to master this insecurity
by wanting to reduce its members in war. The downward trend
in productive capacity, world-trade and unemployment has been
followed by the upward trend in arms-industries and war.
* At the peak of the 1929-33 depressions, nearly 10 per cent of the
British and nearly 17 per cent of the German populations were the unemployed
and their dependents. -At the time, world trade also fell to about half its
pre-depression size.
199
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
Back of the two wars in this period, in so far as economic
issues are involved, is the clash of productive capacities, the fact
that the productive capacity of one capitalist structure cannot be
fully used until that of another is laid low. This clash is overlaid by
a number of cultural issues and men might for all kinds of reasons
ranging from narrow interests to democratic welfare, and even
whole nations, get dragged into the war as a measure of national
freedom. All these reasons are perhaps important in the very
long run; some are even economically important and we will
presently consider them in their bearing on west-Europe. But
both as to economic origin and consequences, the wars of tliis
period are predominantly wars of productive capacities. The
biggest economic dissimilarity in the two wars lies in the fact
that the 1914 world-war was almost wholly of west-European
origin and making, while the 1939 war is only slightly more of a
west-European character than it is of Pacific set-up. Whatever
else this might denote, it unmistakably shows that the spheres
of economic vitality and arising disorders are shifting and that,
comparatively speaking, west-Europe is stepping back in histor}^
This steppinf' back is not occasioned by the destruction
caused in the two wars. The direct destruction caused to a
powerful country by war is seldom such that it cannot be made
good by replacements. Rarely do the killings, however large
they may be, outnumber the births, so that a war produces little
effect on the numerical strength of west-European populations
except with regard to the ratios between the age-groups. In
like manner, the west-European productive capacity, whatever
be the extent of destruction b)'^ land, sea and air, is continually
renewed and even expanded in the midst of war, so that the end
of a war finds a west-European power at a slightly higher
productive level in certain directions than at the beginning. It is
possible that the 1939 war, before it has ended, will have caused
vast destruction; even so, unless they fight it out to the last
factories, the productive capacity of west-European capitalisms
will not have been appreciably reduced. Not war-destruction. but
post-war incapacities reduce a people’s strength. The morale of
200
ECOXOMICS AFTER JfARX
the peoples, however, is quite another question. There is no
saying when a people might fade out of histoiy as a result of
repeated wars; the German example of a beaten people coming
back soon to war-like vitality makes such calculations extremely
hazardous. It might be said with caution that repeated and long
wars may at some stage turn a people from the zest of this life to
the bliss of the hereafter. Ne%-ertheless, it is safe to treat the factor
of people’s morale as an unknown variable.
West-Europe is stepping back in histor}' as a result not of
the destruction but of the shifts caused by war. The necessities
of war cause such a disturbance in the ratios of the productive
capacities, and their use, of the rvorld’s Great Powers that conti-
nents and hemispheres gain and lose at each other’s expense. The
end of the 1939 war will probably have achieved a greater
disturbance than the 1914 war did.* Impelled by the urge to
♦ Of the world’s seven Great Powers, at the beginning' of the 1914 war,
the ratio in favour of Europe was 5 : 2,
Of the five European powers, the three west-European lands, England,
Germany and France, were, in view of their developed economies and pro-
ductive capacities, genuinely Great Porvers, while, of the two east-Europcan
powers, Czarist Russia fell something short of a Great Power and the
Austrian Empire was only nominally so. The end of the 1914 war saw no
visible alteration in the world ratio, except that the nominally great role of
A.ustria was taken up by Italy while Russia started making strides towards
being a genuine Great Power. But back of this seeming stability in the
world ratio, a great change had taken place. The two c.\'tra-European
powers, U.S.A. and Japan, were so rapidly e.xpanding their productive
capacities and influence that one of them was preparing to be the world’s
greatest power while the other was amassing quite handsome chunks of
power. At the beginning of the 1939 war, the ratio of world powers was
nominally maintained, as before, at 5: 2 in favour of Europe, although real
strength could best be measured by the ratio 3 : 2. The progress of the
1939 war has already seen Italy knocked down so badly that she may not
again find it possible to strut about in peace-time as a Great Power on
pretence. France is, in view of her defeat and other reasons, unlikely to
regain her productive, or world-power position. Whatever may be the
outcome of this war and whatever shifts may yet take place, Europe will
have, with the most favourable ending, two Great Powers against two of the
rest of the world. If Soviet Russia is to be one of these powers, her inter-
vention in world affairs may continue in the political sphere, but is hardly
likely, at least for some time, to spread over to foreign trade and investments.
That leaves just one Great Power for the whole of Europe, whose productive
capacity is relevant to the future of capitalism. Whichever this power may
be, it will not only have defeated its other west-Europcan competitors in
war but will take care to see, at the end of tiie war, that not alone the militarj’
possibilities but more so the industrial possibilities of its defeated foes arc
201
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
eliminate the insecurity of each other’s competition, west-
European capitalisms achieve through their wars a far greater
measure of insecurity. The increasing insecurities of colonial
poverty and obstruction, of competition from extra-European
capitalisms and, perhaps also, of internal disorders are causing
west-European capitalisms through their various wars to step
back in the affairs of man.
The west-European populations have lost their former rate
of increase. Some are constant, while others have a very slow
increase and all are showing unmistakable tendencies towards
great reduction b}' the end of the century. A reduction in
population, however, does not necessarily imply a reduction in its
capacity to dominate over colonial economies or to wage war.
destroyed, at least considerably curtailed. What this may mean to Europe’s
share in world trade is not difficult to foresee. Although competing with
each other, west-European capiatlisms, in their clustering, were able to
dominate world-trade. Europe took over 51 per cent of world trade. The
three west-European powers, England, Germany and France, took over 35
per cent of world trade. West-Europe, before the 1939 war, was undoubtedly
the economic centre and, therefore, also the military and political centre of
the world. West-Europe has irretrievably lost this position. This is so,
not only because one west-European power has already lost its productive
position and one more must follow suit, but also because the American
hemisphere is coming up. The productive capacity of the U.S.A. has gone
on expanding ev'en in the midst of war, as illustrated by its fantastic aircraft
production and Henry Kaiser’s a ship a day programme. This expanded
productive capacity is already manoeuvering for a corresponding position in
the world’s trade, air traffic, oil and other arrangements. Furthermore, U.S.
economy has now used up its internal djmamic and must have recourse to an
expanded world-trade. The pre-war ratio in world-trade between Europe
and the Americas that stood at 51 per cent to 23 per cent in favour of Europe
is likely in the post-war period to be reversed in America's favour, though
perhaps not immediately to the same extent. At the same time, the position
of Asia in world economy might perhaps improve slightly. K Japan loses
the war, the legacv of her productive capacity will to a considerable extent
be taken over by China and, so, in any case, there will be one great power in
Asia. A number of other economic and political movements are maturing,
whose course will to a large extent determine Asiatic development. The
pre-war share of Asia in world-trade was around 14 per cent and, whether
it greatly improves or not, depends very much on extra-economic and unknown
considerations. What these great continental drifts in world economy may
mean to the future of capitalism will in some measure be considered else-
where. -Before we enquire into their significance, let us be_ aware of their
existence. Suffice it here to say, therefore, that great continental drifts in
world economy are taking place.
202
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
What a population may lose in numbers, it may gain in technique.
Actually, however, it is not so in view of the fact that the technique
of extra-European free economies is quite as advanced, if not
more, and, furthermore cultural and scientific stagnation does
under capitalist conditions seem to go with a constant or declining
population. The exact connection behveen cultural stagnation and
a declining population is difficult to determine, except in so far as
capitalism, because of a falling birth-rate, is denied a very vital
internal dynamic, which, in a variety of ways, also causes it to lose
its control over external dynamics.*
West-European inventiveness is also on the decline. With
the- rapidly increasing importance of electrical engineering and
the internal combustion engine, west-Europe is slipping back from
the unquestioned leadership in applied sciences which it held in
the age of steam and steel. The German effort at substitute and
synthetic industries is indeed a brave attempt at recovering by
technique what is not naturally available ; it is valuable for a closed
economy but can hardly determine the world’s economic career.
* West-Europe nearly trebled itself during the 19th century, exclusive
of the paupers who went to the U.S..^.; Britain quadrupled her population;
Germany trebled herself; France more than doubled herself. These vast
increases in population were helpful to west-European capitalisms to tide
over their industrial crises, as they offered enlarged markets and also supplied
man-power for heae-j- capitalisation. France’s population has remained cons-
tant for over two decades now. The failure of Germany’s deliberate effort
to reverse population trends indicates that statistical calculations putting
Britain’s population at around 25 millions in place of the present 45 millions
and Germany’s at 35 millions by the end of the 20th centurj- may not prove
entirely unfounded. There seems to be a great deal of truth in a British
novelist’s suggestion made about the imagined Forsyte family that the birth-
rate under capitalist conditions corresponds to the rate of interest. The
falling rate of interest is threatening to become negative and it seems hardly
possible to check the accomjianying decline in population. This reduction
in population, however, dees not by itself imply a reduction in west-Europe's
economic power against the colonial masses, .^s it is, in terms of the horse-
power used, the German population is greatly in excess of India’s and so
is Britain’s. Horse-power is a great determinant in existing forms of eco-
nomic and political power. Nevertheless, one has to beware of the concen-
tration of horse-power in the British or German style, for concentrated
horse-power is a reason among others of population decline and so forth.
If the age that is passing belonged to concentrated horse-power, the age that
is coming will belong to diffused, perhaps increased, horse-power.
203
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
It is more in the nature of a heroic effort to delay as far as
possible west-Europe’s appointment with destiny.*
Colonial poverty and obstruction, more than any other factor,
are forcing a contracting rigidity into west-European economy.
From Peking to Kahira and beyond, over Calcutta and Bombay,
nationalism, at least with regard to consumption goods, is
becoming the dominant spring of action. Except some small and
semi-fashionable sections of city-dwellers, colonial masses show
greater interest in where their goods are made than in questions
of quality and price. Such an attitude is likely to grow and
ramify with the passage of time and its effect on west-European
economy can already be seen in the unlifting depression that ,has
set upon Lancashire and Lyons. At the same time, colonial
obstruction has been unable to produce any appreciable effect on
west-European investments and production goods industries.'
With the exception of Mexico where the British owned Eagle
Oil Company was confiscated, such attempts made elsewhere in
this period, as for instance in Iran, have come to naught. Nor
have any industries for the making of machines and machine-tools
been set up in the colonies, that may reduce the use of west-
European capacity in production goods. While colonial obstruc-
tion, therefore, has great effect on west-European industries of
consumers’ goods, it has little appreciable effect on producers’
goods industries.f
* Whether the accoustic torpedoes, radio-directed bombs and such like
of west-Europe’s war machine are indicative of continuing^ scientific vigour
or are the achievements of an old craft is difficult to tell. Perhaps Europe
may yet take the lead in the sciences of small-unit horse-power and low-
wattage electricity. As it is, U.S.A. was alreadj’' before the war the leading
country in industries of electrical engineering and the new science of electro-
nics seems to be making great headway there. As the Asiatic countries are
not burdened with the heavy capitalisation of an old technique, there seems
to be no reason why Asian scientists should not take the lead in the new
sciences of dispersed technics of electronics, plastics and so forth. .They
have, however, not yet shown adequate scientific vigour and are dominated
by the urge to ape European technics of the industrial sciences. All this
however should not in any way obscure the outstanding fact that west-
Europe is still the leader in the highest branch of science, that of mathematical
physics.
fA colonial population can determine the origin of consumers’ goods
even while it may be politically enslaved, but it cannot do that with regard
204
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
Much more than their deliberate obstruction, the increasing
povertj' of colonial masses is causing rigidit}' and contraction in
west-European economy. Through successive repetitions of the
town-village relationship, over decades in some areas and over a
century and more in certain others, colonial masses are no longer
able to act as adequate life-givers to capitalist economies. They
may yet delay west-Europe’s final stepping back in world affairs by
their replacements of requirements for railways, public works and
consumers' goods industries, but these requirements are showing
a tendency to contract. Unless prevailing economic trends are
reversed and that does not seem very likely, the increasing
poverty of colonial masses will be the greatest single factor towards
the undoing of west-European economy.
Continental shifts in the use of productive capacity, tenden-
cies to declining population and to loss of inventive vigour and
colonial poverty and obstruction are relegating west-European
economy to a back-seat in the affairs of men.
Let us now see if the purposive activity of west-Europeans
is such as may stem their relegation to a back-seat. We will be
concerned here with that aspect of purposive activity which
produces tangible economic results; questions relating to motives,
secondary aims, moral worth, errors and of what ought to be
done will be discussed when we take up the general problem of
history.
The purposive activity of west-Europeans with regard to
their greatest insecurity has tended, with the increase in colonial
to producers’ goods, as the capitalisation under existing technics is lieavy
and the market is almost entirely confined to a foreign government and
native capitalists so that it is influenced more by considerations of risks and
prices and non-national interests than by national sentiment or interest.
The repair and loco shops of India, for instance, have, in spite of thirty
years’ talk, remained assembly and repair shops nor arc they likely to become
effective manufacturing centres for locomotives and automobiles. However,
the economic movement in producers’ goods industries begins when political
movements have matured into success and, therefore, this is hardly the place
to predict as to iiow soon or how late colonial obstruction may start affecting
the west-European industries in producers' goods. Incidentally, the Mexican
confiscation with some compensation to American and British oil companies,
although the result largely of Mexico's own national vigour, was partly
facilitated by the attitude of certain influential interests in U.S.A.
205
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
poverty and obstruction, to be more political than economic. This’
tendency is likely to grow, not so much because colonial obstruction
will become increasingly active, but, more so, because the
problems of colonial poverty are too baffling to admit of an
economic solution by west-Europeans. Events no longer wait
upon capitalist activity in the colonies and it has very often to go
counter to them, so that it is almost always left behind. West-
European capitalisms are frightened of the development of cousin-
capitalisms in the colonies and they have even less vigour to work
out a new system of techm'cs that may bring, wealth to colonial
masses and impetus to their own economies. Retention, not
development, is become the colonial key action of west-Europeans.
With each repetition of the town-village relationship, the retainable
volume will lessen and west-European capitalisms will shrink
with the shrinking of colonial economies.*
* Recent west-European. activitj- in the colonies has been of little
economic consequence. The recent expenditure on canals, for instance, in
Sind, Rajputana and the Punjab, although big in its own way, has in no
way given a new dj-namic either to Indian or to British economy. If there
is any increased agricultural production, it is either just sufficient to cover
the canal rates, that is, the interest and profits on government-owned canal
capital, or it flows into tlie pockets of a verj- small section of big landowners
wdthout further productive use. At the same time, west-European actmtj*
in the colonies is assuming more and more a luxurj’ character, as, for instance,
the Bombay Backbay Reclamation, the new HowTah Bridge, the Tanganyika
Hunting Preserves, the Kenya Highlands and so forth. These may make
life more pleasant and beautiful for the west-Europeans and a section of the
native rich; they may even give a little retentive support to the west-
European engineering industries; but they are absolutely powerless to revive
capitalist or colonial economies. There is no likelihood of west-European
economic activity acquiring a different character. Recent trends indicate
that the west-European drift towards public works, transport and what is
now becoming known as agricultural mechanisation will continue. Whatever
their value as political or propagandist expedients, these measures of road-
making, canal-making, electrified agriculture and the like cannot revive
colonial economies nor can they assist capitalist economies beyond making
a small demand on the engineering industries. Until the internal relationships
of colonial agriculture, among landless labour, poor_ peasantrj* and_ big land-
owners are radically altered and, what is more important, until colonial
villages can undertake certain co-operative activities without much capital
expenditure and can also xeinvigorate themselves by some new tj'pe of small-
unit technics, there is no hope for colonial economies. All_ this
is beyond the reach of a foreign authority. There has indeed
been some straj' talk of a vigorous colonial policy, as, for instance, when a
Secretarv of the British Federation of Industries, speaking at a meeting of
the Royal Institute of International Affairs, proposed the development ot
206
ECONOMICS AFTER IIARX
West-European political activity- in the colonies is simple.
If colonial poverty is an insoluble problem, colonial obstruction
is not quite that. By virtue of their political power, west-
Europeans have to date been able to prevent a sudden cessation of
the colonial dynamic through the revolutionar)' action of colonial
masses. They have also tried to appease colonial obstruction to
the extent that is possible without danger to their own economies.
^^^hen therefore, west European political activitv in the colonies
is not based on repression, it is infonned by the tactics of investi-
gating commissions, enquiry committees, reports and piece-meal
reforms. This is so not only when conser\'atives are in office,
but also when popular front governments, such as those in France
and Spain to which Socialists and Marxian communists were
party, held office. Nor is this condition likely to change. The
liberal conscience of west-Europe, whatever its moral worth,
is too uninformed economically to be able to direct the future of
capitalism. Its solution to let the colonies develop themselves in
freedom and to depend on their goodwill for such dynamic as they
may choose to give has never been worked out in its economic
details and, even if it were, there is no guarantee that it would
Africa and other colonies at a negative rate of interest. In the first place,
such talk is more an adventure in thought than a working policy, for west-
European capitalisms will far sooner battle against the inevitable than accept
such a vigorous policy- full of grave and unknown risks ; in the second place,
it shows that even the most fore-sighted of wcst-Europcan economists can
only think of colonial development on the basis of old technics and, therefore,
on the basis of diminishing capital. West-European capitalism, therefore,
is likely to continue fighting a rearguard action on the colonial front ; even
more in the economic than in the political sphere, must it forego all positive
ideas and stick to the negative policy of non-liquidation. It can at best trj'
to prevent the deterioration of the colonial dynamic to the extent that is
possible by the employment of political methods. This will be so, whether
conservatives are in office or communists or any other variety between these
trvo extremes. Marxism has no solution for the heasT capitalisation of
west-European industrj'. Its ready-made answers that, with the socialisation
of industry, everything will be all right, must appear strikingly irresponsible
not only to the owners and managers of wcst-Europcan industiy- but also
to imperial labour with its sub-conscious insight into the need for colonial
annexes. That is why Marxism has so far proved unacceptable to west-
Europeans and their working class and, should it under some stress capture
power, it must, with its present understanding of the class-struggle and
technics, stick to the economic policy- of colonial non-liquidation or, else, if
it chose to fulfil its loosely held ideals, send wcst-Europcan economy hurtling
along the path of relegation, of low production and unemployment.
207
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
prove acceptable to west-European governments* Unless,
therefore, some severe stress occurs as a result either of successful
colonial obstruction or of great continental shifts in the ratios of
. productive capacit}--, west-European political activity in the
colonies will continue to be based on the policy of retention. In
the midst of slirinking economies, this political policj'^ to retain
whatever is possible can only mean the attempt to stabilise colonial
masses into the lowest caste of capitalism much in the same manner
in which Hindus of a disreputable period stabilised one of their
own limbs into the caste of untouchables.
With regard to the insecurity presented by the clash of
productive capacities, west-European purposive activity has been
able to evolve nothing be}'ond international understandings on
technical processes and certain quotas of production and trade.
Such understandings open or secret are arrived at among the
capitalists of deciding nations and they have operated in spheres
like oil, chemicals and sugar. While they last, they are helpful
in removing various sources of friction among different
capitalisms but they are wholly unable to prevent war. As,
however, west-Europeans have no economic remedy other than
this against war, these international understandings, when they
are set up once again, are likely to cover extensive spheres such
as foreign exchange and currenc3L They will undoubtedly help
in delaying another outbreak of open hostilities among nations,
not only because of the wide tie-up they will introduce among
important national economies but more so because of the lessened
competition due to the post-war destruction of a few substantial
economies. Nevertheless, these understandings can hardly prove
enduring, as they will be strained, on the one hand, by the
diminishing yield of colonial dynamic and, on the other, by the
pressure of continental shifts on their stable systems of quotas of
* Incidental!}', this liberal conscience of freedom and justice is not to be
confused with west-European communism. On account of its mistaken
understanding of the world struggle, west-European communism, when it
is not irritating its own nationals, is busy exasperating the colonial masses
whose struggles it chooses to look upon as the e.xpression of bourgeois and
petit-bourgeois interests. It is thus ineffective and, to the extent that, it
befogs men’s minds, somewhat harmful.
208
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
production and foreign trade. They can delay war, but they
cannot prevent it. It is even possible that the var that comes
after' the operation of these very loose international agreements
on production, currency and trade may be genuinely deadly.
Nevertheless, world capitalisms must pursue this policj’ of inter-
national understandings, for they have no other economic
preventive against war.
* * * *
The U.S. and Hindustan are graduating themselves into the
two polarities of the rest of our world. If the U.S. has become
the leader of the capitalist system, what happens there might yet
deflect the sequel being worked out in west-Europe ; so is
Hindustan become the chief arena for the shaping of an alternative
economy.*
The U.S. productive capacity is higher than that of the three
west-European lands, Germany, France and Britain put together.
Its productive capacity in mining and manufacturing, and that is
what matters in the international relationships of world economy,
is higher than that of the whole of Europe. But, with this
economic expansion, the U.S. has fully exhausted its internal
dynamic and used up such a dynamic as it could get- from the
other countries of the American hemisphere. There is now little
question of further expansion ; the U.S. is faced with the problem
of preventing a set-back into lower levels of production.f But
* The study of west-European economics has disclosed the main direc-
tions in which the capitalist system is developing, among which is the shift
in favour of the North American continent. 'Wc have now to find out
if this shift alters or modifies any of the main directions. There is not
much need for our purposes to study in detail the remaining major capi-
talism, that of Japan, as it is developing more or less along west-Europcan
lines, only that the caste-stratification is easier and tlie relegation slower.
With respect to the two-thirds of the human race, the colonial adjunct of the
capitalist system, our study of Hindustan will apply more or less to Oiina,
.to practically the whole of Asia, to Africa, to the broad masses in the
South and Central American Republics. Hindustan has become so to say
a mirror to these other economics. The chief among the colonial adjuncts
has come to such a point of saturation that it reveals the many facets of
colonial economy better than any other.
t The enormous production of the U.S. A., as reflected in its ycnrly
national income, which, with round Rs. 1,400 per head in a population of 13
crores, works out at one and three-fourths of the total in the three west-
European lands, Britain, France and Germany, with an average of Rs. 750
14
209
FRAGMENTS OF A WORU) MIND
per head in a population of 16 crores. It may be suggested that a higher
cost of living and the greater range of ser\'ices in the U.SA. vitiates these
figures and tlie productive capacity of the country should be assessed on
firmer grounds. _ Of tlie world’s entire primary produce in 1937, Europe
shared- 21 billion dollars, Europe including the U.S-S.R. shared 28
billion dollars, while North America comprising U.S. and Canada
shared 15 billion dollars. These figures, however, do not give an adequate
idea, as they are made up largely of food and other agricultural products.
Confining oupelves to non-agricultural products, we find that Europe in-
cluding Russia produced 39 per cent, Europe excluding Russia produced
30 per cent, while North America shared 40 per cent of the world’s total.
These non-agricultural products used in industry and manufacture give a
true idea of the U.S. productive capacity, which is thus shown to outstrip
that of the whole of Europe including Russia. That the Canadian productive
capacity is here merged in that of the United States does not introduce a
new factor, as it is comparatively small and is more or less an annexe of
the U.S. Further evidence of the preponderance of U.S. productive capacity
in world economy can be had from certain figures of production in 1937 ; it
may be remembered that this year was particularlj- favourable to Europe in
view of its hectic rearmament.
Europe
minus Russia
Europe plus Russia
North America
Raw Material
.. 24%
34%
35%
Fuels & Power
.. 30%
38%
47%
Metals
.. 24%
36%
34%
It is well known that the U.S. produced over 65 per cent of the world’s
petroleum in 1929 and has not allowed the ratio to fall very much lower;
at one time, it produced nearly 80 per cent of the world’s automobiles; its
production of steel and cotton was almost half of the world’s. The 1939
war must have further expanded U.S. productive capacitj" U.S. leadership
in world economy must now be without parallel.
If U.S. productive capacitj- has on the one hand reached such amazing
heights, it has, on the other, arrived at its peaks from where the downward
passage is already showing. On the basis of 1929 being 100, the North
American mining and manufacturing position had deteriorated to 93 in 1937
and 73 in 1938, automobiles had sunk to 89 and 4^, while the index of
producers’ investment goods fell to 87 in 1939 and 54 in 1938. The U.S.
has exhausted its internal dynamic. The expansion in rail-roads and allied
industries, in internal roads and the automobile industry appeap to have
reached its limits; the 1929 production of 50 lakhs automobiles in a world
total of 63 lakhs is an all-time record. Even the production of electricity
can only be extended more with a view to tide over a depression than to
satisfy real needs of expansion. There is also not much scope for expansion
in the internal consumption of food or cloth. It may be remembered ftat
the U.S. has used up whatever d>-namic it could get from the South American
Republics without going too far in the vi-ay of west-European empire-colony
relationshios.
What stares U.S. in the face is that, despite almost ten years between
1929 and 1938 of increased population and scientific improvements, its
production-index of capital goo^ fell to 87 while that of Europe rose to 111
It would appear that the leader of capitalist economies is fated even more
thdh the other members to suffer speedy contraction and relegation. When
the 1939 war has ended, some of the west-European capitalisms at any rate
will have a lot of internal reconstruction to put through while the U.S. will
210
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
the world is limited and imperialism is territorially blocked.
Increasing jwverty in the colonies is causing a contraction in such
capitalist economies as have so far been using them up. The
leader of all capitalist economies will thus have to discover fairly
soon whether it can enlarge an external dynamic in the process
of using it to its own advantage. Is it at all possible to shunt
world-trade from its empire-colony rails to a new road which leads
to expansion in the production equipment and consumption of all
trading countries? U.S. economy will have to tackle this
question, not for the good of the world, not for the good of the
colonies, but for its own survival and for full use of its own
productive capacity. If there is no answer to this question, U.S.
capitalism must suffer the same tendencies to relegation and to
transformation of class into caste, which we detected in west-
European capitalisms. We have therefore to find if there is any
additional strength in U.S. capitalism, which marks it off from'
its west-European cousins. Before we do so, let us broadly go
over the entire scope of dangers to which we have found world
economy to be subject.
The severest danger to world economy consists in the
productive equipment of two-thirds of the human race. Denied
the advantages of science and improving technics, this equipment
has been knuckling under the weight of foreign capitalisms and
labour done with its help is getting increasingly barren of yield.
5000 crores of labour-hours under this equipment are of equal
have no such additional incentives in repairing war-destruction. There may
be few years of animated demand, in consumption and in the produce of
limited new industries. The United States will thus be wholly unable to ‘
make use of its expanded productive capacity unless it chooses to utilise for
post-war world-trade the shifts caused in mid-war. Herein lies a reason
for the decay of U.S. isolationism stronger than any articles of faith.
The U.S. productive capacity demands involvement in world-trade. It
demands a world in which trade shall freclj' grow. Aside from the question
of what a largely self-sufficient economy can excliange for its produce,
the United States will have a still greater menace in the poverty and
obstruction of two-thirds of the human race. If colonial poverty is
primarily causing the relegation of west-European capitalism, it also re-
mains to cause a lower use of the U.S. productive capacity. The most
outstanding question, for capitalist survival, therefore, is whether the
leader of capitalist economies will be able to face any better than west-
European capitalisms the issue of cojonial poverty.
211
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
money-yield to 250 crore labour-hours in free capitalist economies.
This great unbalance in the productive equipment of the human
race goes with the equally great unbalance in its political and
armed power. There are three major aspects of this unbalance.
One aspect is whether the world’s productive equipment at all its
geographical points could be brought to the efficiency of yield that
has been attained at any favoured point. If that were not
possible, can tlie productive equipment of the retarded nations
be in the alternative so remodelled as to give an average per-
worker yield ,of the world’s production? These t^vo aspects,
however, relate essentially to the creative activity of the retarded
peoples themselves and the existing capitalisms can have nothing
to do with them except in so far as to support the activit}' when
necessar}A But there is a third aspect with which the continuance
of the existing capitalisms is bound up. This is the aspect of
the decreasing yield of colonial labour-hours in a world where no
new ones can be annexed and those that have been are jockeying
to get into their own. This decreasing yield of the retarded
peoples is depressing the highl}' mechanised industries of the free
economies. Time there was when this mechanisation proceeded
triumphantly with each new annexation, but the reverse process,
going on all the time, is now become irresistible ; larger and larger
masses of men are getting thrown on the rubble of the outermost
rings of the colonial circle. These men just do not exist either as
market for foreign manufactures or as field of investment for
foreign capital. To raise their consumption has always been a
o moral and a human need, it has now become an economic need of
the free capitalist economies. This can only be done by improving
the productive equipment of the retarded peoples and by so
reshaping their internal distribution that larger masses may get a
share at least of the increased production. We have found the
west-European capitalisms wholly unable to face this issue of the
productive and distributive equipment of the retarded peoples
and the Japanese capitalism has also no solution except the short
expedient of cheap-selling goods. The closed Russian economy
is not yet concerned in an economic way with this world issue.
It will now be' our task to find out how far, if at all, the leading
212.
ECONOJriCS AFTER MARX
capitalism of the U.S.A. may give a new twist to this paramount
issue of world economy and, in what manner, the retarded peoples
themselves, as mirrored in Hindustan, may attempt to refashion
their productive and distributive equipment.
Second only to this danger of retarded equipment in two-
thirds of the world is the danger of prevailing technics. Heary
and large-unit technics have been the mode of a world in v.'hich
application of science to industry' is the exclusive privilege of a
few powerful nations. These same technics cannot be spread
throughout the world without being in some measure an act of
simple displacement. If Hindustan and China are to build ship-
y'ards and make turbines and textile machinery of their own,
they' will no doubt add to their own wealth and, in the process,
may' add somewhat to the wealth of the world but will also take
away considerably from the productivity' of the Japanese and
British capitalisms that have so far supplied these needs for them.
This, however, is a question which we may set down as insoluble
in any foreseeable human future ; no free nation would ever reduce
its own wealth in order that another’s may not be reduced nor
would all the nations of the world agree to share equally in the
fruits of human toil. Simple displacement in the application of
prevailing technics to economy and, with it, displacements in the
wealth of nations are therefore bound to occur.
The more serious aspect of the danger of prevailing technics
lies elsewhere. It consists in the unequal application of science
and mass-production to man’s various demands. If it were
possible to produce unlimited quantities of all ty'pes of goods, this
danger would not exist. But that is impossible in any economy of
any age or type. Even for such first demands as bread and milk,
man has not yet found the means for their free municipal supply'.
Perhaps in a very intelligently managed economy under social
ownership, he may make of bread and milk. free supplies as of
water, although in fixed equal quotas, but that too will take a very'
long time to come. The economy as a whole, whatever the
ownership and management, must remain an economy' of scarcity
and price, unless a benevolent God gives us again a Kamdhenu or
213
FRAGIIESTS OF A V,'02LD
places U5 back in Adam's paradise. We cannot escape the price
mechanism. In capitalist economies, this price mechanism coupled
v.'ith the needs of ymr has made for a block-use of sdence, not an
all-round use. Sdence and mass-production explore in any period
a special bit of the territor}’ of men’s demands, this particular
demand becomes most profitable to supply and productiTe cz-pzdty
in this sphere is pushed into great expansion. This is the basis
of heavy mechanism, large-imit technics and mass-production. The
Sodet econom}' of Russia has indeed eliminated the profit motive,
but has taken over the technical basis of capitah'sm, its block-use
of sdence, its lop-sided large-unit technics. The problem of
teclmics is therefore independent of the form of ownership in an
econom}* and must be tackled separateh*. Otherwise, it majv' make
for specific industries, expanding and depressed by turn, for
obstruction in changing oi'er to better processes and materials,
for foreign exploitation, for chimerical expansion, for concentrated
destruction in time of v/ar and, abo%-e all, for hopeless mal-
distribution of sodal understanding and intel%ence and for an
unequal distribution of wealth. An economy with large-imit
technics and block-use of sdence cannot achieve balance.
This problem of technics is not to be confused with the demand
to return to a simple life with few wants. Nor is it to be taken
as an advocac}' for simple spatial decentralisation, now becoming
quite a fashionable idea, in which all that is done is to break up
prevailing technics into its several processes and to specialise these
in different factories over different areas. It is as little to be
taken for a denial of the machine or, of mechanical and electncai
power; it is not an advocacy of handicrafts. AH these aspects are
diversioneiy* offshoots of the current problems of technics; the
basic problem is not to cut down the use of mechamcal or electncai
power but to make it available for production in the same small
units in the manner it is today a^’ailable for consumption in pros-
perous economies as light, ventilation or heating. This may
increase the total wattage and horse-power in use, most certainly
it would do so among the retarded peoples, and this power would
be a kind of maid-of-all-work and, there would be corresponding
214
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
small-unit machines to process not one bit of an article but to
produce the whole article. This •will require an almost new
beginning in science, a kind of flexible small-unit technics. It
cannot be achieved at once, nor does it toda}' seem at all possible
in spheres such as those of turbine and automobile manufacture.
But an economy must steadily aim to realise flexible technics
wherever possible. Only so can an economy hope to achieve real
and undepressing expansion and an equal distribution of wealth
and social understanding. Only so can an economy acquire
balance, in which man’s various demands are orchestrated in a
harmony of all-round application of science. So ma5' perhaps
culture and economy become joint partners in an enterprise of
all-round and unhurried development in place of the order where
culture is subject to an economy of piece-meal but fevered
expansion. We have found privileged and imperialist west-
Europe burdened too much with its own past of heavy mechanisa-
tion to take up fle.xible technics and Soviet Russia does not seem
inclined to experiment with any new patterns of science. It will
be our task now to find out if the U.S. has any contribution to
make in this direction, more particularly, if the retarded peoples
can summon up enough understanding and courage to show a
new way of technics.
The third danger to world economy consists in private
ownership and the corresponding forms of distribution. Critics
of capitalism have fi.xed this danger in such well-known phrases
as ‘the clash between forces of production and relations of
production' or ‘the lag between production and purchasing-power'
or consumption. Even those who reject the theoretical scaffolding
of these phrases, namely, the labour theory of value and the
theory of surplus value, continue to talk of the main malady of
capitalism, as the clash between expansive production and con-
tractive consumption. Actually, however, there is no reason why
there should be contracting consumption even in a society where
a considerable part of the annual wealth is usurped by the small
class of capitalists and landowners. Such a differentiation of
consumption will take place that luxury goods play an unduly large
215
fragments of a world mind
part m the economy. The purchasing power of wage-earners
and little men is restricted, not so of the owners, so that there will
be a greater consumption of luxury goods and no necessary lag
between production and consumption. It is, of course, possible
that not all the earnings of capita! are consumed and a large part
of these are saved. These savings may be larger than what is
possible to invest in further production. In such a case, there
will be a falling-off in consumption. But, then, this will be under-
investment or the inability of production to expand. Actually,
this is how the apologists of capitalism, with the reason or
unreason of its traditional critics, are styling the trade cycles
and slumps. They maintain that, during periods when an old
demand exhausts itself, a scientific impulse runs out and no major
inventions take place, production cannot absorb savings. In other
words, the forces of production are weakened. What thus started
as the theory of low purchasing-power and contracting consump-
tion in the hands of the traditional critics of capitalism has now
made its full circle as the theory of under-investment and weakened
forces of production in the hands of its upholders. This is the
fate of all theories which contain a partial truth. For a time, they
appear so true and brilliant, and then they are shown to be too
wide a generalization.
We know the origin of these errors and how wrong it is to
think of production, consumption and savings in abstract or as
entities of an isolated capitalist economy. We have found them
to be highly complex categories of a duality consisting of an inner
capitalist circle and an outer colonial circle. The basis of capitalist
development has lain in the clash between expanding equipment
of the free economies and contracting equipment of the annexed
economies, between imperial production and colonial production,*
*We must continue to avoid all questions relating to the general
theory of value. If, in earlier parts of this study, the term, value, has
been used, it was more with a view to explain Marx’s econonne though .
And where the conception of surplus value has been attempted to _oe se
right, it has stood for nothing else but the source and extent of ^ploitatwr
that takes place in a world of political and armed inequality, une ot tn<
most prolific subjects of economic enquiry is value and its measurement
But the results attained are hardly in keeping with the enormous laboui
216
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
As such, the dangerous consequences of capitalist ownership can-
not be fixed in such abstract phrases as the clash between forces
of production and forms of distribution. These dangers have to
be viewed separately. The most important among these is the
•level of consumption among two-thirds of the human race. It is
a consequence of the productive and distributive equipment of
the retarded peoples, which is itself a consequence of capitalist
rule over the world. We may merely note it here as, one, the
fact of colonial starvation and, two, the fact of blocked and falling
consumption of quality goods of foreign manufacture.
spent on the subject. All the current theories of value arc variations cither
of the labour theory or of the supply and demand theory. No formula-
tion helps us to understand life’s economic substance, for the formulation
is rigid and eternal, while the substance is fluid and, historical. We have
seen how Marx’s socially necessary labour-hour as the measurement of
value is all upside down in view of the imperial-colonial inequality in the
application of science. The only thing really worthwhile in this thcor>-
is its ideal, its norm, that the labour-hour should be enabled to produce
approximately equally, whether in Timbuctoo or in Sydney, and that it
should be given appro.ximately equal consumption. In like manner, the
supply and demand theory, also in its form of marginal units and preference-
scales, deliberately ignores the forced conditions within which the narrow
act 'of buying and selling takes place. This theory is perhaps pood enough
as a principle of accounting and industrial management, but, as a mirror
to value in changing economies based on changing forms of ownership
and rule, it is hopelessly anaemic.. All this discussion has perhaps pro-
ceeded from a question that docs not exist ; what 1s value is like asking
what is God. This may be a good enough question for metaphysics, but,
for economics, the proper question relates to the price-mechanism through
which a set of historical conditions translates itself into money-expressions.
We must therefore avoid this discussion on value and retrieve from its
debris the only article of value, that labour-hour, whatever its land, should
be enabled to produce approximately equally .and, whatever its form, should
be assisted to consume approximately equally. For the rest, economics
must study man as a producer under certain conditions and as a consumer
under certain conditions. Our enquirj' has related to the conditions of
capitalist development. We have studied capitalism as a process in time.
This has yielded certain results both as to the past and. as to the current
tendencies that run into the future, but more so is it important as a method
of enquiry. It may be possible, and perhaps worthwhile, to erect
a logic of theoretical economics based on this method and the results,
but that would be a vast and independent undertaking. Such a logic
w'ould presumably deal in detail with five entities, man in in’s
economic dealings, productive equipment in its relative yield, world-
relationships, political rule and economic ownership. Essentially these would
be the two entities of labour and the productive equipment and they would
act and react upon each other in the context of the three other entities.
217
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
When we confine our study to the distributive mechanism
within the inner capitalist circle, recentmost development discloses
an increasing emphasis on luxury consumption in contrast to the
consumption of necessities. In the measure that capitalist
economies are unable to expand or even to make full use of their
available productive capacity, there take place unemployment,
seasonal employment and price fluctuations that affect the wage-
earners adversely. All this leads to under-consumption, both in
quantity and quality, of the necessities of food, clothing and
housing ; around-the-poverty-line consumption in the case of nearly
twenty percent of west-European population. It is hardly likely
that, so long as the profit-structure and the world-relationships
of empire-colony production remain intact, any schemes of
minimum wage and social security may offer an enduring solution
of this vexed question. There is also a certain amount of
voluntary foregoing of necessities in favour of fashion or enter-
tainment, as in the case of the west-European girl who would deny
herself a meal a day for a whole week so that she could get her
dress laundered for the next ball. One can depend on capitalist
civilization to keep up such expenditure. Essentially, however,
the enormous earnings of capital in the highly-capitalised economies
must partly spend themselves in luxury, as this is encouraged by
the lack of new fields of investment and by tax-policies and also,
because, in its absence, there would be a further fall in production
and slumps would grow acuter. The structure of over-capitalised
profits in the context of contracting economies turns luxury-
expenditure almost into a kind of national virtue. There are, of
course, various grades of luxury-expenditure as of the low
expenditure on necessities, but we may broadly describe this
dangerous feature of capitalist distribution as the under-consump-
tion of necessities and the growth of luxury-consumption.
But the distributive dangers of late-capitalism go deeper than
the increased expenditure on luxury and the blocked expenditure
on necessities. The enormous earnings of late-capitalism cannot
be wholly reinvested nor spent, and the larger part of these must
perforce remain idle. It must be remembered that these earnings
218
ECONOMICS AFTER 5IARX
are the genii of a system by which the three west-European, U.S.
and Japanese capitalisms meet almost wholly the world’s demand
in machine-tools, machines, transport and power engines and in
a considerable range of manufactures. There is thus a concentric
force that pushes the world’s capitalist profits into these centres.
But there is now no pushing back of these as profit-yielding new
investments or manufactures. We are already familiar with the
main argument of this increasing exhaustion of the external
dynamic and we will yet have to straighten out some tangles ; we
will here confine ourselves to that aspect of the external dynamic
which does not permit the reinvestment of its profits. Let us take
one by one the fields of investment in the retarded economies. It
would be a highly dangerous undertaking to equip retarded
economies with the industry of machine-tools, for, whatever the
initial investment, Western capitalisms may thereby choke the way
to their own sales of machines and engines. Except under
irresistible competitive and political pressure from a stronger
cousin, no capitalism can ever want to sell machine-tools where
it can sell their products, locomotives, textile-machines, turbines,
printing-presses, autos, dynamos and so forth. It would be the
turning of an annual demand into a twenty-yearly demand, if even
that.* Likewise, imperial capital except of the U.S. has got so
mixed up with the sale of manufactures to retarded economies
that it would seriously depress itself if it chose to sell machines
instead or invest in them ; this danger has got fixed into the well-
known phrase of the clash between Birmingham and Lancashire.
Only such machines have been installed in the retarded countries
as followed a long and bitter fight or as were not competitive with
manufactures. Imperial capital would have preferred to sell
electricity rather than turbines, if it could somehow, on cables or
elseway, ship the current with profit ; it prefers to sell continually
the electrical accessories of bulbs, radios, refrigerators and the like
to a limited clientele rather than risk supplying them with the
* In the year 1942, of around 1000 per cent machine-tools e.xpansion,
the U.S. produced less than 2000 million dollars worth of machine-tiols
against a total machine production thirty to forty times as much. The
U.S. machine-tools industry is likely to slump severely in the post-war
period, for machine tools last 10 to 40 years.
219
FIGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
machines to manufacture these. Along the entire gamut of
machine-tools, machines, engines and manufactures, there is an
internal competition and imperial capital therefore exerts its
utmost to retain its areas of consumer’s goods rather than seek
investment in new fields of colonial production.
This rearguard and fear-stricken policy of retention is further
encouraged by the fact that major capitalisms including the U.S.
have little capacity to absorb an increased produce from retarded
economies. Their demand for food and raw materials is not
capable of great expansion and such developments as increased
food production in England and the U.S. quest in Arabia in
pursuance of its oil-conservation policy are likely to cancel each
other in their effects on world trade. Unless, therefore, the breath
of freedom fructifies the science and technics of retarded economies
so as to produce raw materials or quality goods, the problem of
increasing their food and their primary produce remains an inter-
nal question, without effect on world trade. To increase the food
and cloth supply of two-thirds of mankind may be man’s greatest
economic task, but world-capitalism must remain indifferent to it
as long as it offers no commodities for international exchange nor
return on investments. The colonial masses have interested
imperial capital as low-wage producers of limited raw materials,
as rate-payers on its transport and public utility installations, as
consumers of its manufactures and all this range of interest
provides no scope for new investments. World capitalism has
come to a dead end where new investments in the retarded
economies threaten to choke off the source ,of its profits. The
greatest distributive danger of late-capitalism is thus the enormous
accumulation of unproductive savings and the continued depression
of the colonial equipment.
Aside from the distributive dangers, late-capitalism continues
the tradition of waste and deceit in production and, what is worse,
deepens the element of chaos. As a principle we are already
familiar with the industrial crisis and trade cycles that are as old
as capitalism itself and we have also traced how the territorial
blocking. of the external dynamic has thrown it into a condition
220
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
of general crisis. But, even, in this condition, there is no gradual
decline, but general disorderliness and ups and downs Unable
to find new profits in the industries of life’s staple substance, the
methods of capitalist production lead themselves profitably to new
industries of tenuous living on a mass scale. It is not for nothing
that the industries that could still greatly expand in the decade
before the 1939 war were those of films, radio, alcohol and low-
price fashions. Air-travel and televised entertainment seem now
to be on the list and, though’ various pep foods and vitamins might
yet effect some improvement, the staple demand that capitalism
seems yet able to tackle and mass-produce is that of pre-fabricated
houses. This will probably have been capitalism’s last useful
contribution, not to the world, but to its favoured peoples.
Capitalism goes where it finds profits and this productive impulse
must further exaggerate the importance of luxury-consumption,
not alone of the high-income groups but also of the low-price
mass-scale variety. In addition to this specific chaos of tenous
production, the general chaos of the regulation of an entire
economy by the blind motive of profit remains. This motive
expands the supply of certain demands beyond supportable
dimensions, there is a scramble to contract just as there was a
scramble to expand, and the sensitiveness of markets assisted by
highly speculative expectations produces serious ups and downs.
A serious fall in the use of late-capitalism’s productive capa-
city makes of war an almost irresistible temptation. When
demand in producers’ goods and transport falls very much below
the supply arrangements, there is a temptation to shunt to war;
if steel, autos, electrical equipment and such like are not suffi-
ciently purchasable for civilian use, their rate of consumption as
tanks, jeeps, shots and shells can be feverishly fast. The
insecurity emanating from the unemployed millions disappears for
a time, the victor hopes for enlarged exports to retarded peoples
at the expense of the defeated capitalisms and rationed consump-
tion during the war serves to animate the post-war civilian demand
just as it helps an imperial population to key up its war-effort to
a total pitch. If the index of producers’ investment goods in a
221
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
major capitalism is falling too far low, an experience to which
late-capitalism must be increasing!)' subject, and if it is elsewhere
shooting up so high that armaments alone could have done this,
the cunning of rulers has discovered no means other than -war
and its preparations as the way out. The greatest danger of late-
capitalist production to world economy is its general and special
chaos and its escape-mechanism in war.
It is surprising how late-capitalism with its surfeit of sawngs
and the comparative lack of nev.' investment-fields can still preserve
a handsomely positive rate of profits. Should not capital flow into
the available fields of investment and increase earnings or bring
down prices and expand production, although, in the process, the
rate of profit may fall so low that the rate or interest reaches the
zero or the near zero-level? Against this natural development
are operating the forces of monopol)', such monopoly as is the
result of concentrated production as well as that which depends
on the political rule of one country' over another. The monopoly
in production operates because of the huge amount of capital
necessary' to start rival and risk}' enterprises in the industries of
producers’ goods, because of government assistance and of the
national and international understandings of capitalists in the
same industry'. The monopoly in the foreign trade and invest-
ments of subject peoples can operate either nakedly or through
the. currency', tariff, purchase and other policies through which an
imperial government can easily shut out inconvenient competitors.
These monopolies, arising out of imperial rule as also out of heavy
mechanisation, shut out rival capital, keep production low and
prices high. Their aim is to maximise profits, while, if they had
not e.xisted, there would be expanding production, particularly
among retarded peoples, at levels of nominal rate of interest. In
fact, interest has about ceased its productive fimction in the major
capitalisms. It still continues its distributive function of making
the rich richer or of maintaining a rentier class. But its produc-
tive function is restricted to an expanding economy, when
enterprises of old and new wants are continually added and interest
serves as a regulator. In an over-capitahsed economy that can-
222
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
not further expand, interest is a deadweight and an obstruction
to production. That the monopolies keep it up artificially prevents
in particular the expansion of colonial equipment and does not
allow late-capitalism to face its distributive dangers. But such an
artificial maintaining of interest is bound to lead to a clash between
capital that is being used and capital that is idle, capital that is
tending towards extinction and capital that is artificially propped
up to continue. This monopolistic maintaining of interest and
profits as a productive factor in late-capitalist economies is thus
a serious interference with normal development and the source
and aggravation of the many dangers to which world economy
is subjected.
The dangers of private ownership in late-capitalism may now
be enumerated as, in the sphere of colonial economies,* the fact
of starvation, the fact of falling consumption of foreign quality
goods, the fact of enforced depression of the productive equipment
and, in the sphere of developed economies, the fact of under-
consumption of necessities, the fact of growth of luxury-
consumption, the fact of unproductive savings, the fact of chaotic
and war-making production, the fact of monopolist continuance
* The concepts, “retarded economies,” "colonial economies,” “outer
circles,” on the one hand and “major capitalisms,” “imperial economies,”
“capitalist economies,” on the other have been here used more or less
synonymously. It might appear somewhat extravagant to lump together
Hindustan, China, Iran, Sinhal, Misrc or Congo under one category, in
view of their varying political status. But, on the deciding issue of
capitalist development, their status is similar, that of a retarded, colonial
equipment which acts as an external dynamic to the major capitalisms.
Without a doubt, there are two main economic camps in the world today
and the basis of the division lies in the use of science and technics and in
the yield and fruits of the labour-hour. Such an economy as that of South
Africa is obviously colonial, with this difference that there is a very'
numerous middle class in the’ shape of the South African whites. The
Australian economy, however, has slipped out of the colonial field, not
because it is rapidly industrialising itself, but because the free application
of science to its agriculture and sheep-rearing has enabled it to enter the
world market with a raised status of the labour-hour. Nevertheless, it
has certain mixed features, not the least important of which is its imperial-
istic exclusion of new settlers from a land, almost twice as big as Hindustan
with less than l/40th of its population, and a corresponding dependence
on a stronger capitalism, that used to be .Britain but is now changing
into the U.S.
223
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
of interest in an unexpansive economy. Some of these facts
overlap each other and, in particular, the productive equipment
of the retarded peoples. West-Europe has been found to be
wholly unable to overcome any of these dangers with the result
that its classes are being transformed into castes and its economies
are being relegated. By the abolition of private ownership,
Russia has eliminated such of these dangers as have arisen in the
inner circle of late-capitalism but, by virtue of being a self-
sufficient closed economy, has remained unconcerned with the outer
circle of two-thirds of mankind. It will now be our task to find
out how far the U.S., as the leader of late-capitalism, and
Hindustan, as the mirror and leader of the retarded economies,
are likely to overcome these dangers in a constructive way.
Can the leader of late-capitalism assist in rewving the
productive equipment of the retarded peoples? In one essential,
it is differently placed from its west-European or Japanese cousins.
While .these have acquired a peiA^ading interest in retarded eco-
nomies so that they can sell their machines only at the expense
of their manufactures and their machine-tools at the expense of
their macliines, U.S. capitalism has no such burdensome past
except to some extent in the American hemisphere. Its trade
in manufactured goods with the retarded peoples of Asia and
Africa does not pla}' a vital role in its economy. It is free to
sell them machines and machine-tools. It is thus unfettered
enough to transact such trade and investments with the retarded
economies as would increase the yield of their labour-hour. This
introduces a new factor in the fortunes of capitalism. The
prospect is opened out of restoring, perhaps temporaril)’-, the
imperial dynamic, which has ceased to expand with the enmeshing
of the whole world and which has started contracting due to
colonial poverty and obstruction. In making such sales and
investments to retarded economies as they need and not as are
forced on them by westrEuropean and Japanese capitalisms, U.S.
economy can develop their productive capacity, can assist them ,
in producing a very much larger- volume of goods. There is thus
a theoretical possibility that capitalism may yet be able to expand
224
ECONOMICS after MARX
through re-equipping the colonial economies, where alone expan-
sion is still possible.
Against this theoretical possibility must be set the peculiarly
self-sufficient character of U.S. economy, which distinguishes it
from that of its west-European and Japanese cousins. The U.S.
has much to give, but it can take very little. It is the leading
producer in the world not only of producer’s goods and manu-
factures but also of food and raw materials. The other capital-
isms are great consumers of food and processors of raw materials
extracted from retarded economies; they thus maintain the
gigantic town-village relationship between themselves and tivo
thirds of mankind. U.S. econom}"^ has worked out this relation-
ship largely within its own frontiers, beaten it into a land of
balance in the use of science, so that its great industrial production
is matched by an equally great agricultural and mining production.
The U.S. may be willing to sell machine-tools for the manufacture
of locomotives or small dynamos and also it may be wanting to
increase its export in radios or fountain-pens; in this quest, it
would want an expansive economy in the retarded areas, but what
would it talce in exchange, not food-crops, not fruit, not meat, not
cotton, not iron, not petrol, no manufacture of mass-use, not any
kind of the staple goods that are the bulk of world-trade. U.S.
can give, but it cannot take; this hamstrings the leader of late-
capitalism in its effort to shunt world-trade to the new rails of
two-way expansion. If other capitalisms are unable to expand
world economy for fear that this would hurt them, the leader of
late-capitalism may find that, w'hile it had little to fear, its hopes
were also ill-founded. It is, however, possible to exaggerate
the inability of U.S. economy to take, as it appears to us in the
immediate present. With an expanding equipment in the retarded
areas, the furs of Sinkiang, the silks of China, the brocades of
Hindustan may come into such mass-use of the U.S. population
as to become articles of bulk-trade.*
* It wouldn’t be such a fanciful thing if the U.S. handed out scrips
to its citizens for travel and stay in those areas from which it would not
otherwise receive payment. Such travciships could be granted on the close
225
15
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
It is also possible that the retarded peoples, through theit
scientific ingenuit}’’ and collective effort, may yet produce new
g’oods and raw materials to enliven world trade, but that can only
come out of their free endeavour and no outside agency can
awaken it.
The leader of late-capitalism would, in addition, be unable
to use to the full its capacity to re-equip the retarded economies.
To U.S, has fallen the leadership of an economic system that has
reached maturity and, as such, it would be unable to interfere too
much with the existing arrangements. The west-European capi-
talisms, ably supported and rivalled by the Japanese, have knit
up the larger part of the retarded world into a political rule that
guarantees the working out of the town-village relationship. The
U.S. must accept these different imperialisms as so many agents
of stabilitj' and, when it is not at war with one or the other, it
must work in collaboration with them. There may be an under-
current of hostile competition, there may at times be bitter clashes
and wars may not al\\'a3's be avoidable, but, as a general measure,
the U.S. must accept these imperialisms as stabilising agents in
an otherwise uncertain and unforseeable world. The retarded
peoples themselves may hold quite another view of what would
really constitute a stable world, but the leader of late-capitalism
would need an incalculable courage to experiment with a stability
that is yet to emerge. Calculably, therefore, the U.S, would have
to compromise with imperialistic trade policies and its supply of
of secondarj' studies or marriage or some such general occasion applying
to all citizens and the internal arrangements between the U.S. government
and the investors and exporters would not be impossible to make. It is
however doubtful if even the U.S. could summon up sufficient courage to
do this for the mass of its citizens. Likelier it is that the U.S, would
want to become monopolist, the collector of old treasures and the user
of new luxuries of the wide world. That travelships or treasures would
raise the U.S. so infamously above the rest of the world in luxury and
in what is kmown as culture is a moral fact with which we are not here
concerned. But, while we may think out ail the possible ways in which
U.S. could receive payment from other economies, let us not forget that
the debts and reparations owed by post-1919 Europe were defaulted, partly
because Britain and Germany were not over-particular about their credit,
hut more so because the U.S. had no use for their manufactures or raw
materials.
226 ,
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
producer’s goods to retarded economies would be limited. In
addition, U.S. capitalists would prefer to transact their sales and
investments with groups of capitalists among the retarded peoples,
rather than encourage a socialist reconstruction. Although this is
a question which we will yet examine in greater detail, it is cx-
tremel}' doubtful if the re-equipping of retarded economies can be
carried out by their capitalist classes.
But U.S. economy will be forced, to whatever extent it can,
to expand its dealings with retarded economies. Its state of
continued slump will force it to do so. It cannot continue on a
basis which compelled its index of producer’s goods to fall from
100 in 1927 to 87 in 1937 and 54 in 1938, and certain inteirening
years were worse, while that of Britain rose to 133 in 1937 and
199 in 1938. Not all of America’s fall or Britain’s rise could be
explained by the arms industries ; a considerable part of it was due
to the same conditions, which made the rate of industrial profits
in the U.S. fall from 12-8 per cent in 1929 to 2 per cent in 1932,
6-7 per cent in 1937 and 3*8 per cent in 1938, while that in Britain
was maintained at the comparatively steady levels of 10*5 per cent,
8-5 per cent, 11*2 per cent and 12 per cent in the same years.
It is significant that the majority of U.S, manufacturing com-
panies registered negative rates of profit for the years 1931 and 32.
The U.S. cannot fail to notice that Britain is able to steady its
fall by the use of the external dynamic, which, although deterio-
rating, is still capable of providing replacement orders and limited
quality consumption. U.S. economy, however, has completely
exhausted its internal dynamic and also such as it could get from
the American hemisphere, with the result that, if it is to save
itself, it must hit out for an e.xternal dynamic, which may, be
enlarged while being used. Recent developments are arousing a
kind of vigour, albeit naive, that aspires to cope with this task.*
* Let us first acquaint ourselves with the vast increase in U.S. pro-
ductive capacity that has taken place as a result of the war. A Federal
Reserve Board inde.x places industrial production in 1943 at 2-4 times the
average of 1933-39. It is tlius roughly, three-quarters over again of the
1929 production. Less than 30 per cent of this production is for civilian
use, while the rest is war-goods, which have gone to different pans of the
world. What will happen to this enormous productive capacity when it is
227
ECONOMICS AFTER MARX
collaborate with existing imperialisms for being agents of stability
and the comparative inability to receive a large volume of goods
from other economies. It is easy to see that this is an exceedingly
divided position. The only positive results that may be expected
from it are some displacements of the existing volume of world-
trade* and soihe expansion of the retarded economy of China as
is not politically enslaved. The pressure of TJ.S. economy may
also compel its capitalist-imperialist cousins to permit or undertake
a very limited expansion of the colonial equipment. For the rest,
the TJ.S. will play a pervadingly obstructive role. If it will
obstruct the west-European and Japanese capitalisms in stabilising
'the colonial peoples as the untouchables of the capitalist system,
it will also obstruct the retarded peoples in availing such oppor-
tunities as make for a sharp break wdth the past. That it will
thereby be unable to prevent successive fall in the use of its own
productive capacity or genuinely exjiand the productive equipment
of the retarded peoples can be said without hesitation. It will
not have provided a positive dissipation of the severest danger to
world economy. How long it will be able to delay the hardening
of declining capitalism into a world-wide caste-structure or the
advent of a wholly liberated world economy is another question.
The world-index of production and its tendencies would show that
either the one or the other must happen well before our century
is out. Capitalism must either harden into a world-hierarchy of
castes or it must be blown up with the advent of liberated eco-
nomies and the U.S. will meanwhile obstruct either solution and
be generally negative. In its recentmqst development with regard
* In an earlier chapter, we have seen how the war is causing shifts
in world trade and productive capacities and how this, combined with
other factors, is causing the relegation of wcst-Europcan economy. There
seems hardly a doubt that the U.S. will try to make full use of these shifts
for its post-war economy; its world-shipping, air-traffic, trade in machines
and goods, foreign investments arc bound to grow at the expense of tlic
west-Europcan economies. At the same time, this growth will be unequal
to the needs of American economy, so that, inspitc of the continental shifts
in favour of the U.S., the major fact of colonial poverty and obstruction
in conjunction with the hca\'y mechanisation of capitalist economics will he
there to cause the relegation of U.S. economy. That the process of this
relegation will be different and will produce different consequences has
already been indicated.
229
FRAGMENTS OF A WORLD MIND
to retarded equipment, U.S. economy is showing a tendencj' to
divided interests and delaying action. The leader of late-capitalism
has, thus, about already relinquished its leadership of the colonial
peoples ; will they submit by becoming increasingly star\'ed helots
of- a declining capitalism or will they rise into manhood?
The technical danger in the U.S. can be assessed from the
fact that, while' the index of total production fell from 100 in 1929
to 73 in 1938, the output per man-hour rose from 100 in the
earlier to 116 in the later year. Scientific and organizational im-
provements are continually increasing the yield of the labour-hour,
but there cannot obviously be a corresponding and unceasing
increase in the production of known goods. The hours of work
must therefore be reduced or men thrown out of work and it is
usually the second alternative which materialises. The shock of conti-
nuous improvement in the known lines of hea\ 7 - mechanisation
and mass-produced goods can only be observ'-ed if scientific vigour
can at the same time create new mass-wants and the means to
satisfy them. Aside from the question whether each continuous
expansion of wants is desirable, the U.S. experience shows that
it is no longer possible. The great new line of which much is
being made today is air-traffic. According to a U.S. statement,
the air-craft industr}^ and the traffic personnel would in coming
years give work to anjwhere between 6 per cent and 10 per cent
of the entire population This appears a highly inflated estimate,
but, were it true, it could only be effected largely at the expense
of rail and ship traffic. As such, it would not be the creation of
a wholly new work. Although scientific vigour is abundantly
improving known lines and synthetics, there is not adequate ew-
dence that U.S. economy could match it by hitting out into wholly
new venues. This will cause a forced depression in technical
progress from one industr)’^ to another ; there will be no unhurried
and balanced use of science and stability -will not come.
U.S. science is, how'ever, not oblivious to the problem
of flexible and small-unit technics. The w'ar has, for instance,
given it the jeep. This is a kind of maid-of-all-work; it can
plough the fields, furnish power for milking, in addition to being
230
ECOKOMICS AFTER MARX
an auto. The U.S. Department o£ Agriculture has calculated that
the jeep can do the job of a heavy tractor with the petrol con-
sumption of a half gallon to the acre, in place of the tractor’s 3-3
gallons. There can be no better illustration than the jeep of the
new technics that we must strive for ; all-purpose, small capitalisa-
tion, low running expenses. In like manner, U.S. exporters are
• reported to be busy perfecting small dynamos for use in retarded
economies, which would cost 15 dollars to the horse-power in place
of the former 40 dollars. All these experiments in small-unit
technics are, indeed, offshoots of an economy that promises to
remain predominantly large-scale and heavily mechanised. The
U.S. can no more make a sharp break with traditional technics
than west-Europe can. Nevertheless, these experiments and •
others being made on the uses of low-watt units may inspire
•retarded economies to base their industrial renovation on a pur-
poseful striving after small-unit technics.
U.S. science will yet add to the amenities of life, it will give
gas that heats and also cools, it will give new materials like
plastics and new fibres to wear, new drugs and surgery and, of
course, new weapons of war when needed and, on the whole, it
will make life more comfortable, at least, for the majority of its
citizens. But, beyond grazing the problem of small-unit technics
and thus maturing it slightly, U.S. science will not have provided
a new technical base that can sustain a more purposeful production,
distribution and defence.
231
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-28787484147088093922017-10-26T10:29:00.001+05:302017-10-26T10:29:31.801+05:30Hinduism / Ram Manohar Lohia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<pre style="border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; line-height: 1.42857; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 9.5px; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap; word-break: break-all; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">The greatest war of Indian history, the war </span><span style="background-color: yellow;">between</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> the
liberal and the fanat</span>ical in Hinduism, has raged for 5000 years </span></pre>
<pre style="border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; line-height: 1.42857; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 9.5px; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap; word-break: break-all; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">and more and its end is not yet in sight. No attempt has been
made, as it should have been, to make of this war the loom on
which India’s history could be woven. Even incidental mention
of it is rare and sketchy in books of </span>history<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> . And yet it is the
continuing motive of much that moves in the country.
All religions have in the course of their career suffered
from a conflict between the liberal and the fanatical. But with
the exception of Hinduism, they split up and have often drawn
blood and, after a long or short period of slaughter, succeeded
in overcoming the conflict. With Hinduism, a perpetual see-
saw </span>between<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> the liberal and fanatical goes on and, while open
slaughter has never taken place, the conflict remains unsolved to
this day and a haze covers up the issues involved.
Christianity, Islam and Buddhism have all had their schisms.
The fanatical elements that the Catholic faith had at one time-
accumulated led to what was then the liberal challenge of </span></span></pre>
<pre style="border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; line-height: 1.42857; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 9.5px; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap; word-break: break-all; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">Pro</span>testant<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> Christianity. But every body knows the Reformation led
to the Counter-reformation. Catholicism and Protestantism still
differ in many of their doctrines but it would be hard to call one
liberal and the other fanatical. If Christianity stays split on
doctrinal and organisational issues, the </span>Shia<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">-Sunni schism in Islam
relates to a detail of chronology. Buddhism likewise split into
the two sects of </span>Heenayana<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> and Mahayana and, although they
never drew blood from each other, their differences relate to
doctrine and have nothing to do with the ordering of society.
Hinduism has known no such split. It has indeed </span>conti<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">-
</span>nually<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> disintegrated into sects. The innovating sect has as often
come back to it as an additional unit. Doctrinal issues have
therefore never been sharply defined and social conflicts have
stayed unresolved. While Hinduism is as prolific as Protestantism
in giving birth to sects, it casts over </span>tliem<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> all and undefinable
mantle of unity such as is secured by the Catholic organisation
through the prohibition of sects. Hinduism has thus become a
system of expanding exploration as much as it is the hunting
ground of the irrational and the fanatical.
Before an attempt could be made to discover why Hinduism
has so far been unable to work this conflict between the fanatical
and the liberal out of its system, it is necessary to recall the broad
differences of view that have always prevailed. On four major
and concrete issues, those of caste, woman, property and tolerance,
Hinduism has suffered from a perpetual swing between the liberal
and fanatical attitudes.
Over four thousand years ago and more, molten lead was
poured into the ears of some Hindus and their tongues pulled
out by other Hindus, for the caste system ordained t</span>hat<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> no
untouchable shall hear or read the Vedas. Over three hundred years
ago </span>Shivaji<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> had to agree that his dynasty shall ever choose its
ministers from among the </span>Brahmins<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> in order to be crowned king
according to the Hindu custom. Around two hundred years ago
when the last battle of </span>Panipat<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> was fought, and the crown of India
passed into British hands as a consequence, one Hindu general
</span>quarreled<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> with another for he wanted to pitch his tent on higher
land corresponding to his caste. Nearly fifteen years ago a
zealous Hindu wished to save Hinduism by throwing a bomb at
Mahatma Gandhi, for he had then set out to destroy </span>untouch<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">-
ability. Until recently, and in certain areas to this day, the
Hindu barber would not shave untouchable Hindus, while he
would be only too willing to serve the non-Hindu.
At the same time two formidable revolts seem to have taken
place against the caste system in ancient times. A whole </span>Upanishad<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">
is devoted to the complete and entire demolition of the caste
system'. From the nature, tone and compass of attacks made on
the caste system in ancient Indian literature, these appear to
belong to two different periods — a period of criticism and another
of condemnation. While this question may be left to future
investigations, it is obvious that the two bright periods of the
</span>Mauryas<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> and the </span>Guptas<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> follow a comprehensive attack on the
caste system. But caste never quite dies out. It is at times
severely rigid while it loosens during other periods. The </span>fana<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">-
</span>tical<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> and the liberal continue intertwined in respect of the caste
system and the difference between any two periods of Hindu
</span>history<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> consists in the dominance of one or the other strand. At
the moment, the liberal is dominant and the fanatical dare not
become </span>vocal<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">. But the fanatical is seeking to preserve itself .by
entering in</span>to<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> liberal thought. If it is too late in the day to talk
of caste by birth, people are talking of caste by vocation. ' Even
if men will not argue for the caste system they rarely act against
it, and a climate grows in which the reasoning mind and the
habitual mind of the Hindu are in conflict. Caste may slacken
as an institution in some of its forms, but as a habit of mind it
has not yet been dislodged. The conflict between the liberal and
</span>fanatical<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> in Hinduism in respect of the caste system threatens to
continue unresolved.
</span>While<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> modern fiction has made us aw</span>are<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> of the woman alone
knowing who the father of the child is, </span>Jabala<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">, 3,000 years ago
or more, was not herself sure who the father of her child was
and her name is remembered with pride as a truthful woman in
ancient literature. In parenthesis it may be remarked that the
caste system swallowed her up by turning her son into a </span>Brahmin<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">.
Literature of the liberal period has warned us against too close
an enquiry into </span>geneologies<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> of families, for like the sources of
rivers they too are muddy. Rape under coercion which could
not be fought successfully brings the woman no harm nor dirt,
for, as this literature says, she renews herself every month. The
woman has also the right to divorce and </span>property.<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> While this
liberal attitude towards woman prevails in the luminous periods
of Hinduism, fanatical periods reduce her to a bit of property to
be taken care of by the father, the husband or the son.
At the moment the Hindu woman finds herself in a strange
situation, both liberal and fanatical. She finds it easier than any-
where else in the world to rise to positions of eminence. But
her claim to a single standard with men in respect of marriage
and property continues to be assailed. I have read fanciful leaf-
lets denying the claim of Hindu woman to property on the plea
that she might fall in love with a man of another faith and so
change her own, as if this could not happen perhaps even -more
frequently to a Hindu man. That land should not be further frag-
</span>mented<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> is quite another question and applies both to male and
female inheritors, and some way should be found to keep a
holding, under the permissible maximum, intact. As long as law
or custom and habits of thinking discriminate between man and
woman with respect to </span>property<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> and marriage, the fanatical in
Hinduism will not quite die out. The hankering of the Hindu
to see in his woman a goddess who never descends from her
pedestal opens the most liberal among them to dull and dubious
wishes. The fanatical and the liberal shall remain intertwined
as long as the Hindu refuses to accept his woman as a human
being same as he.
The sense of property in Hinduism is liberalised by its faith
in non-accumulation and non-attachment. Fanatical Hinduism,
however, so interprets the theory of Karma as to give the men of
wealth and birth or power a superior status and to sanction as
right whatever exists. The question of property in its present
form of private versus social ownership is a recent one. But in
its old form of non-attachment versus sanctioned order, it has
continually been present in the Hindu mind. As with the other
issues, the Hindu has never been able to carry his thinking on
the question of property and power to its logical conclusion.
Hinduism has varied both in time and with the individual only
in so far as the one or the other concept of property holds primacy.
Tolerance is commonly reputed to be an unfailing feature of
Hinduism. That is not so except in the sense that open slaughter
has hitherto been abhorrent to it. The fanatical in Hinduism
has always tried to establish unity through uniformity, through the
suppression of- sects and faiths other than the one that was seeking
to dominate, but such attempts have never achieved success. These
have in the past been treated more or less like the antics of little
children, for Hinduism until recently was called upon to apply
the principle of unity in diversity only to its own sects. The </span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">
element of tolerance in Hinduism has therefore been almost always
stronger than the element of coercion. But this tolerance must
be distinguished from a similar attitude of mind which European
rationalism has brought into the world. Voltaire knew his </span>oppo<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">-
</span>nent<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> to be wrong and yet he was </span>willing<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> to fight the battle for
tolerance, for his opponent’s right to say w-hat he wanted.
Hinduism on the other hand bases its case for tolerance .on
various possibilities of what is right. It concedes that doctrines
and usages may varj' with climes and classes and is not prepared
to </span>aribitrate<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> among them. It wishes for no uniform pattern in
the conduct of men’s lives, not even a voluntarj'- uniformity and
what it wishes for is that undefinable unity in </span>diversity<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">- which it
has in the past so successfully threaded through all its </span>sects<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">. Its
quality of tolerance, therefore, rises out of the creed of non-inter-
</span>ference<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">, out of the belief that variations need not </span>necessarily<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> be
wrong, but are perhaps different expressions of what is right. .
Fanaticism has often tried to impose the unity of uniformity
on Hinduism. Its motives have not always been suspect. Its
driving power may well at times have been the desire for stability
and strength, but the consequences of its acts have always been
disastrous. I do not know of a single period of Indian history
when fanatical Hinduism was able to give India unity or well-being.
Whenever India has been united and prosperous, the liberal in
Hinduism in respect of caste, woman, property and tolerance has
always predominated. The upswing of fanatical fervour in
Hinduism has always led to the social and political break up of
the country, to the disintegration of the Indian people as a State
and as a community. I do not know if all. those periods when
India got broken up into numerous states and kingdoms were
characterised by fanatical zeal, but it is </span>indisputable<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> that the unity
of the country took place only when liberal Hinduism held sway
over the Hindu mind.
Some great failures of modern history' to integrate the </span>country<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">
stand out. What started as the liberal faith of </span>Gyaneshwar<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">
reached its climax in .</span>Sivaji<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> and </span>Bajirao<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> but fell just a little short
of ultimate success by degenerating into the </span>Peshwa<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> fanaticism. </span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">
Again, what started as the liberal faith of Guru Nanak reached
its climax in </span>Ranjit<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> </span>Singh<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> but degenerated early into the </span>fana<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">-
</span>tical<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> squabbles of the Sikh confederacy. These efforts that once
failed have also sought bitterly to repeat themselves in </span>contem<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">-
</span>porary<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> times, for some deep and dark stirrings of the soul connect
them with the fanatical streams now flowing out from sources in
Maharashtra and Punjab. To a student of Indian history, all
this is rich material for study from various angles such as the
close connexion between the teacher of the religious word and the
political effort to build an Indian union or the problems of where
the seeds of degeneracy lie, whether right at the beginning or as
the result of a later mix-up and of the drive that impels groups
to repeat their fanatical failures. A similar study of the
</span>Vizianagram<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> effort and whether it had its roots in </span>Shankar<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> or
</span>Nimbarak<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> and what rotten seed lay beneath the glory that </span>Humpi<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">
once attained would be of great interest and benefit. Again, what
lay at the source of the liberal efforts of </span>Shershah<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> and Akbar and
why did they lose to the fanaticism of an Aurangzeb?
The </span>recentmost<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> effort of the Indian people and Mahatma
Gandhi to integrate the country has succeeded, but only partially.
Undoubtedly, all the liberal streams of five thousand years and
more have pushed forward this effort, but what lies at its </span>imme<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">-
</span>diate<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> source, whether </span>Tulsi<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> or </span>Kabir<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> and Chaitanya and the great
line of the </span>Sants<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> or the more modern religious politicians like
</span>Rammohan<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> Roy and the rebel </span>Maulvi<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> of </span>Faizabad<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">, apart, of
course, from the liberalising influences of Europe. Again, all the
fanatical streams of the past five thousand years seem to be com-
</span>bining<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> to deluge this effort and, should fanaticism meet its
defeat, it will not rise again.
The liberal alone can unite the country. India is too ancient
and vast a countrj'. No force can unite it except the voluntary
human will. Fanatical Hinduism cannot by its nature mould such
a will, while liberal Hinduism can, as it has often done in the past.
Hinduism of course is not a political religion, in the narrow
sense, a religion of doctrines or organisation. But it has been
the eminent medium and inspiration for the great impulsion of </span>
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">the Indian political </span>history<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">- towards the unity of the country. The
great war between liberal and fanatical Hinduism may well be
called a conflict between the two processes of unification and
disintegration of the country.
Liberal Hinduism has, however, been unable to solve the
problem completely. Within the principle of unify in diversify
lies concealed the seed of decay and disintegration. Not to talk
of the fanatical elements which always sneak into the most liberal
of Hindu concepts and which always hinder the achievement of
intellectual clarity, the principle of unify in diversify gives rise
to a mind which is both rich and lethargic. It is tiresome to
watch Hinduism </span>continually<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> splitting into sects, each with its own
jarring noises, and, however much liberal Hinduism may seek to
cover them with the mantle of unify, they inevitably produce a
weakness in corporate living of the state. An amazing non-
</span>chalance<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> comes to prevail. No one worries about the continual
splitting, as if every one is sure that the)’’ are parts of one another.
This is what gives fanatical Hinduism its chance and driving
power, the desire for strength, although the result of its endeavour
produces further weakening.
The great war between liberal and fanatical Hinduism has
at present taken the outward form' of their differing attitudes to
Muslims. Nevertheless let it not be forgotten even for a moment
that this is only an outw</span>ard<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> form and all the old unresolved con-
</span>flicts<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> continue and are potentially more deciding. The </span>assassina<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">- </span></span></pre>
<pre style="border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; line-height: 1.42857; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 9.5px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-break: break-all; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">tion of Mahatma Gandhi was not so much an episode of the
Hindu-Muslim fight as of the war between the liberal and the
fanatical in Hinduism. Never had a Hindu delivered greater
blows on fanaticism in respect of caste, woman, propeify' or
tolerance. All the bitterness was accumulating. Once before an
attempt had been made on Gandhi ji’s life. It was then obviously
and openly for the purpose of saving Hinduism in the sense of
saving caste. The last and successful attempt was outwardly
made for the purpose of saving Hinduism in the sense of protecting
it from Muslim engulfment, but no student of Hindu history
can be in doubt that it was the greatest and the most heinous
gamble that retreating fanaticism risked in its war on liberal
Hinduism. Gandhiji’s murderer was the fanatical element that
always lies embedded in the Hindu mind, sometimes quiescent and
sometimes pronounced, in some Hindus dominant and in others
passive. When pages of history shall try the murder of Mahatma
Gandhi as an episode in the war between the fanatical and the
liberal in Hinduism and arraign all those whom Gandhiji’s acts
against caste and for woman, against property and for tolerance
had enraged, the composure and non-chalance of Hinduism may
well be shattered.
Why the liberal and fanatical have continued intertwined in
the Hindu faith and have never hitherto challenged each other
to a clean and decisive battle is a subject rich in exploration to
students of Indian history. That the complete cleansing of the
Hindu mind in respect of the fanatical never took place is beyond
doubt. The disastrous consequences of this unresolved conflict
are also beyond doubt. As long as caste is not completely erased
from the Hindu mind or woman treated as an equal being with
man, or property dissociated from the concept of order, the
fanatical will from time to time play havoc with Indian history
and also impart to it a continuing lethargy. Unlike other religions,
Hinduism is not a faith of doctrines and the church bat a way of
social organisation, and that is why the war between liberalism
and fanaticism has never been fought out to its end and the
Brahmin-Bania combination has ruled India for good or evil
through centuries, a rule alternating between the liberal and the
fanatical.
Mere liberalisation of the four issues will not do; they have
to be once for all resolved of the conflict and eliminated completely
from the Hindu mind.
Back of all these unresolved conflicts is the metaphysical
problem of the relationship between appearance and reality. There
is indeed little difference in the attitudes of liberal and fanatical
Hinduism with regard to this problem. Hinduism by and large
seeks to go beyond appearance in search of the reality, does not
indeed decry phenomenon as false, but only of a lower, order to
be submerged in the mind’s ascent to the higher reality. All philo-
sophy in all lands has indeed concerned itself with this problem.
What distinguishes Hinduism from other faiths and theologies
is that, while this problem has been largely confined to philosophy
in other lands, it has in India seeped into the faith of the mass
of the people. Philosophy has been set to tunes of music and
turned into faith. But in other lands, the philosopher has gene-
rally denied appearance in search of reality. His effect on the
modem world has therefore been very limited. The scientific
and secular spirit has hungrily collected all data of appearance,
sifted them, tabulated them and discovered laws that hold them
together. This has given the modern man, his type being pre-
eminently the European, a habit of life and thinking. He accepts
ardently facts as they appear. The ethical content of Christianity
has furthermore lent to the good acts of man the status of the
works of God. All this works towards a scientific and ethical
exploitation of the facts of life. Hinduism, however, has never
been able to get rid of its metaphysical basis. Even the common
faith of the people goes beyond the visible and sensible for a
glimpse of that reality which appears not. The middle ages in
Europe had also shared such a perspective, but, let me repeat this
was confined to the philosopher and denied appearance altogether
or took it as a reduction of truth, while the mass of the people
accepted Christianity as an ethical faith and to that extent accepted
appearance. Hinduism has never denied facts of life altogether,
but only concedes them the status of events of a lower order and
has always, so to this day, tried to go in search of reality of the
higher order. This is the common faith of the people.
A vivid illustration comes to my mind. On the great but
half destroyed temple of Konarak, one can see thousands upon
thousands of sculptured images carved on the stones of the
building. There is no miserliness nor coyness in the artist’s
acceptance of appearance; he has indeed accepted them in all
their rich variety. Even here there seems to be a certain order
of arrangement. From the lowest to the highest block, the
sculptured images run in the series of unsorted variety to that
of the hunt, to the love play, to music, then to power. Everything
is rich movement and activity. But, inside the temple is almost
bare and such images as there are speak of stillness and peace.
From a moving and active exterior to a still and static interior
seems to have been the basic design of this temple. The search
for the ultimate reality was never abandoned.
The comparative development of architecture and sculpture
as compared to painting might well have its own story to tell. In
fact, such paintings as are still available to us from ancient times
are more architectural than otherwise. Man has probably greater
scope to project his notions of ultimate reality into architecture
and sculpture than painting.
The Hindu has therefore acquired a split personality. At
his best, a Hindu accepts appearance without losing insight into
the ultimate and is ever striving to enrich his insight, at his worst,
his hyprocrisy is matchless. The Hindu is probably the world’s
greatest hypocrite, for he not only deceives others as hypocrites
all the world over do, but he also deceives himself to his own
disadvantage. His split mind between appearance and reality
often encourages him to do so. What an amazing spectacle has
Hinduism presented in the past and does so today. Hinduism has
given its votaries, the commonest among them, the faith of meta-
physical equality or oneness between man and man and things,
such as has never fallen to the lot of man elsewhere. Alongside
of this faith in metaphysical equality goes the most heinous
conduct of social inequality. I have often wondered if this meta-
physical Hindu when he is well placed, does not treat the poor
and low caste as animals and animals as stones and everyone as
everything else. Vegetarianism and non-violence obviously
degenerate into concealed cruelty. While it can be said of all
human endeavour hitherto that truth at some stage turns into
cruelty and beauty into profligacy, this is perhaps more so true of
Hinduism which has attained scales of truth and beauty unsur-
passed in their lands, but which has also descended into pits of
darkness unplumbed by man elsewhere. Not until the Hindu
learns to accept the facts of life in the scientific and secular spirit,
facts relating to work and machine and output and family and
growth of population and hunger and tyranny and the like, is
there any hope for him to overcome his split personality or to
deal a death-blow to fanaticism which has so often been his
undoing in the past.
This is not to say that Hinduism must give up its emotive
basis and the search for oneness of all life and things. That is
perhaps its greatest quality. The awareness and universalising
of that sudden onrush of feeling, which makes a village boy pick
up the kid of the goat and clasp it as if it were his life, when
the automobile speeds along or which sees the tree with its
gnarled roots and green branches as part of oneself, is perhaps
a quality common to all faiths, but no where has it acquired a
deep and abiding emotion as in Hinduism. The God of Reason
is completely without the God of Mercy. I do not know whether
God exists or does not, but this I know that the feeling that makes
one kin of all life and things exists although as a rare emotion
yet. To make of this feeling a background for all activity even
of strife is perhaps an unrealisable adventure. But Europe is dying
of strife born out of a too one-sided acceptance of appearance
and India is dying of stagnation resulting from an equally
one-sided acceptance of the reality behind things. I have no doubt
that I would prefer to die of strife than of stagnation. But are
these the only two courses of thinking and conduct open to man?
Is it not possible to adjust the scientific spirit of enquiry with
the emotive spirit of oneness without subordinating the one to the
other and in full equality as two processes of like merit. The
scientific spirit will work against caste and for woman, against
property and for tolerance and of course yield the processes of
producing wealth such as will dispel hunger and want. The
creative spirit of oneness may secure that ballast without which
men’s highest endeavour turns into greed and envy and hatred.
It is difficult to say whether Hinduism' is capable of acquiring
this new mind and to achieving adjustment of the scientific and
the emotive spirit. But then what exactly is Hinduism? To this
there is no one answer, but -a series of answers. This much is
certain that Hinduism is no precise doctrine nor organiza-
tion, nor can any one article of faith or conduct be consi-
dered indispensable for Hinduism. There is a whole world
of memories and mythology, of philosophy and customs and
practices, part of which grossly evil and another which can be of
service to man. The whole of it makes the Hindu mind, an
essential quality of which some scholars have seen in the principle
of tolerance or of unit)’' in diversity. We have seen the limita-
tions of this principle and where it needs to be revised so as to
dispel mental inertia. A common error however in the under-
standing of this principle consists in the belief that liberal
Hinduism has always been open to good ideas and influences no
matter where they came from, while fanatical Hinduism is not.
This is to my mind an illiterate belief. I have not come across
in pages of Indian history any period when the free Hindu searched
for ideas and objects in foreign lands or was willing to accept
them. In all the long connection between India and China, I have
only been able to list five fancy articles, including vermilion,
imported into India, and of imports of ideas there is nothing
at all.
Free India had essentially a oneway traffic with the outside
world, no import of ideas and very little of objects, except silver
and the like, unless when communities of foreigners settled in
India and tried to become a Hindu sect or caste with the passage
of time. On the other hand enslaved India and with it Hinduism
have shown a remarkable alacrity to ape the conqueror, his
language, his habits and ways of living. Self-sufficiency of mind
in freedom is matched with its total supineness under slavery.
This weakness of Hinduism has never been recognised and it is
unfortunate that liberal Hindus in their illiteracy are spreading
contrary ideas for propagandist purposes. In the state of freedom,
the Hindu mind is indeed open, but only to events taking place
within India’s frontiers, but remains closed to ideas and
influences from outside. This is one of its major weaknesses and
a reason for India to fall a prey to foreign rule. The Hindu mind
must now become open not only to what happens in India, but
also to the outside world and it must apply its principle of unity
in diversity to all the achievements of human thinking and practice.
Strenuous effort must be made to rid it of'its habit to alternate
between outright indifference to and uncoordinated acceptance
of foreign thought.
The war between the liberal and the fanatical in Hinduism has
today taken the surface expression of the Hindu-Muslim conflict,
but no Hindu who is aware of the history- of his faith and country
will fail to take equal notice of the other unresolved conflicts raging
for 5000 years and more. No Hindu can be genuinely- tolerant to
[Muslims unless he acts at the same time actively against caste
and property and for woman. Likewise, a Hindu who is genuinely
against caste and property and for woman will inevitably be
tolerant to Muslims. The war between liberal and fanatical
Hinduism has reached its most complex stage and it may well
be that its end is in sight. Fanatical Hindus, no matter what
their motives are, must break up the Indian State, should they ever
succeed, not </span><span style="background-color: yellow;">only</span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> from the Hindu-Muslim point of view, but also
from that of caste and' provinces. Liberal Hindus alone can
sustain this state. This war of five thousand years or more has
therefore entered a stage in which the very existence of the
Indian people as a political </span>community<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> and a State depends upon
the </span>History<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> of the liberal over the fanatical in Hinduism.
The religious and the human problem is today eminently
a poh’tical problem. The Hindu is faced with the serious choice
of accomplishing a complete mental revolution or else of going
under. He must be a [Muslim and a </span>Christian<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> and feel like one.
I am not talking of Hindu-Muslim unity, for that is a political,
institutional or at best a cultural problem. I am talking of the
emotional identification of the Hindu with the Muslim or the
Christian, not in religious faith and </span>practices<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">, but in the feeling
that I am he. Such an emotional identification may appear difficult
to achieve, for, often it may have to be one-sided and bear the pain
of murder and slaughter. I may here recall the American </span>Civil<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;">
War in which brother killed brother for four years and six hundred
thousand died, but Abraham Lincoln and the American people
crowned their hour of victory w</span>ith<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> precisely such an emotion
between the Northern and Southern brother. No matter v-hat
the future has in store for India, the H</span>indu<span style="background-color: whitesmoke;"> must turn himself
inside out to achieve this emotional oneness with the Muslim.
The Hindu faith of emotive oneness of all -life and things is also
the political necessity of the Indian States that the Hindu shall feel
one with the Muslim. On the path may yet lie setbacks and defeats,
but the direction that the Hindu mind should take is clear.
It may be suggested that the best way to put an end to this
war between liberal and fanatical Hinduism is to combat religion.
That may indeed be so, but the process is tardy and where is the
guarantee that the clever old rogue might not swallow up the
anti-religious as one of its numerous sects? Furthermore the
fanatical elements in Hinduism obtain their systematic supporters,
when they do, from the semi-educated and from the townsmen,
while the illiterate village-folk, however much they might get
excited for the moment, cannot be their steady base. The long
wisdom of centuries makes the village-folk as much as the
educated, tolerant. In their search for sustenance from anti-
democratic doctrines like communism and fascism that base them-
selves on somewhat similar concepts of caste and leadership,
fanatical elements in Hinduism may as well assume the anti-religious garb. The time has come when the Hindu must bathe his </span></span></pre>
<pre style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-radius: 4px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; line-height: 1.42857; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 9.5px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-break: break-all; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">mind and cleanse it of the dirt that centuries have accumulated.
He must indeed establish an honest and fruitful relationship
between the facts of life and his awareness of ultimate reality.
Only on this base will he be able to crush for ever the fanatical
elements in Hinduism in respect of caste, woman, property and
tolerance, which have so long vitiated his faith and disintegrated
his country’s history. In the days of retreat the fanatical has
often sneaked into the liberal in Hinduism. Let that not happen
again. The issues are clear and sharply defined. Compromise
will once again repeat the errors of the past. This hideous war
must now be brought to a close. A new endeavour of the Indian
mind will then start which shall combine the rational with the
emotive, which shall make of unity in diversity not an inert but
a vital doctrine which shall accept the clean joy of the sensible
world without losing insight into the oneness of all life and things.
July, 1950. </span></pre>
</div>
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-68721821248919150092017-05-03T22:38:00.001+05:302017-05-03T22:38:42.787+05:30Political Resolution , 11th Biennial Samajwadi Jan Parishad National Conference held at Jateswar,Distt Alipurduar,Pashchim Banga<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Bhartiya Janta Party has recently won a huge
electoral victory in Uttar Pradesh, a big state, after single handedly forming
the Central Government in 2014; on the other hand the leaders of this party in
power have played a huge role in handing over the country’s politics to the
capitalists. The irony is that despite changing and forming policies in the
interests of the exploitative class, this party in power still claims to be
nationalist. For Samajwadi Jan Parishad two interests are primary, the interests
of the oppressed section and the interests of the country. Our party clearly
believes that it is harmful in the interest of the nation to put the interests
of the capitalists above all.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Crony
Capitalism and Agriculture </span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Even the foreign policy of the Central Government is
in favor of the capitalists connected to the ruling class. The Prime Minister
visits countries which are economically weaker than us and announces loans
worth crores of dollars to them. These loans are given only to countries where
the capitalists close to the PM are signing agreements to make huge projects. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The big capitalists in the country owe 11 lakh crore
rupees to public sector banks. The government is not taking any steps to
recover this debt. When the last governor of the Reserve Bank of India demanded
strong measures in this regard, his tenure in office was not extended. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Self sufficiency in production of food grains and
edible oils has been one of the biggest achievements of our country which is
due to the farmers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the capitalists
are also behind attempts to end this self sufficiency. India has become the
biggest importer of palm oil in the world. The ‘fortune’ brand company of oil
run by Gautam Adani has been selling edible oil mixed with palm oil and also
given the formula to other companies, which is the reason that the palm oil
import is multiplying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The companies of
all major capitalists in the country have started agriculture in mega farms of
thousands of acres of land<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in African
countries and govt. of India is signing agreements with these countries to
import their products. When the prices of Arhar/toor Dal (pigeon pea pulse)
were sky rocketing , Gautam Adani had<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>hoarded<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>cheap African <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>imported Toor Dal (bought for Rs 40/50 per kilo)
in his private port in Gujarat and took it out when the prices rose to 100 Rs
per Kilo. The import duty on wheat import from abroad was first reduced to 10%
from 25% and then abolished altogether. The finance minister has announced that
private companies will be allowed to do contract farming if they want. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The rising costs in agriculture have led to an
increase of 26% in number of farmers committing suicide. The newly elected
government has waived loans of small and marginal farmers which brings some relief.
But at the same time, the top officers of Reserve Bank of India and State Bank
of India have started giving statements against loan waivers. It makes it clear
that the government doesn’t want to consider positively the demand to waive
loans of all famers in the country. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Government has turned a blind eye towards
implementing the Swaminathan Committee Recommendations on support prices for
agricultural produce. The committee had<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>recommended that the support price should be fixed at 50% profit on the
cost of production. We should not forget that Narendra Modi had also promised
to implement these recommendations in the campaign for the 2014 general
elections. The SJP along with all the peasant movements in the country demands
that these recommendations are not adequate and a parity should be made with prices
and minimum wages in the Public Sector in deciding the price for agricultural
produce. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Unemployment
</span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SJP leader and economist comrade Sunil had said
about rural employment that ‘Today India’s villages have become
de-industrialized and there is no occupation except agriculture and livestock
farming. Villages and agriculture have become synonyms. On the other hand
villages and industry have become opposites. Where there are villages there are
no industries and where there are industries there are no villages. This condition
is bad and is a legacy of colonial times.’ An open conspiracy has begun to
finish the sectors providing the most number of employment after agriculture-
handloom industry, cottage industries, small scale industries and forest
dependent means of employment. The law which actually implemented the theory
that decentralization gives employment to more people with less capital was
made completely toothless in April 2015. When actually only 20 products had
remained reserved for production solely by small scale industries under the
manufacturing policy. In 1977 the Janta Party Government had reserved 807
products for production solely by small scale industries under the clear policy
of not letting big industries produce products which could be produced at a small
scale. This policy was against the conditions imposed by the World Bank and
therefore the list was repeatedly shrunk after 1991. With the inflating balloon
of foreign currency and the ‘reform’ of balance of payment came with the
condition that quantitative restrictions cannot be placed on production. Due to
this condition of the World Trade Organization, on 1<sup>st</sup> April 2000,
643 products were removed from the protected list. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It is interesting to look at the list of the
remaining 20 products which was completely cancelled to end protection of Small
Scale Industries- Pickle, Bread, Mustard Oil, Wooden furniture, note-book and
register, candle, incense sticks, fireworks, stainless still utensils, kitchen
utensils of aluminum, glass bangles, iron furniture of all kind, rolling
shutters, locks, washing soap and matchsticks. Big capital, aggressive
marketing and technique which prefers machine over human labor will soon devour
these small industries which provide more employment. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The policy of Central and State level government
purchase organizations to buy products from small and cottage industries only
assures demand for them, now there are also<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>initiatives to make this policy ineffective. Let’s take a look on the
other side. There has been a history of changing legislation and rules to
promote big capital. One of the prime examples of government changing rules and
policies to favor its’ favorite industrial conglomerate is the then Congress Government’s
decision to allow only the Ambanis to import raw material to make synthetic
thread and disregarding the reserved list of fabric to be produced only by<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>handloom s. It is notable that these policy
decisions of the textile and industries ministry made Ambanis the biggest
industrial group in the country, and before them cotton cloth used to be
cheaper than cloth made of synthetic yarn. The permission to produce synthetic
cloth produced on power looms has made lakhs of handloom weavers unemployed.
Earlier it was only permitted to make ‘plain clothes’ on powerlooms and
handlooms produced different colors and patterns. This law was made in 1985.
Then twenty two types of cloth were reserved for handlooms under this law. The
powerloom lobby kept the law stuck in courts till 1993 and when it was
implemented in 1993 the number of protected fabrics was reduced to 11.
According to a reliable study today 70% of the cloth which is sold claiming to
be made on handlooms is actually powerloom<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>or mill- produced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In India 30 lakh people have got employment in
information technology sector while 2 crore people are connected to the
handloom sector. 18<sup>th</sup> century French traveler Francois Pirad di
Lavalle describes that people from as far as the southern end of Africa to
China used to wear clothes woven on Indian looms. According to him just one
port in Eastern India used to export more than 50 lakh yards of cloth annually.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Along with implementing a policy to finish all
employments related to traditional skills, art and handicraft the government is
trying to fool the public by claiming to run schemes to promote skills through
training. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The government has answered in written in the
parliament about Government jobs. Central Personnel Minister Jitendra Singh has
stated in writing in the house that compared to 2013, in 2015 the number of
direct recruitment in central government posts has reduced by 80%. The
recruitment of SC, ST and OBC has reduced by 90%. In 2013, there were 1, 54,841
recruitments for the central government, which were reduced to 1,26,261. But in
2015 the number of recruitments is cut drastically from 1.25 lakhs to around 16
thousand. The number cannot be reduced so drastically without a policy change.
In 2015, only 15,877 people were recruited for the Central Government. 74
ministries and departments have told the government that among ST, SC and
OBCs<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>92,928 people were recruited in
2013; which goes down to 72,077 in 2014 and remains only 8,436 in 2015. Thus
the overall decrease is 90%.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Employment in railways will not increase between
2015-18. The manpower of railways will remain at 13, 31,433. The number was
around 15 lakhs on 1<sup>st</sup> January 2014. Around 3 lakh<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>jobs have been cut. Between 2006 and 2014
there were 90,649 recruitments. In the USA the number of central government
employees is 668. In India this number is 138 per lakh and reducing further. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The recent report of All India Council for Technical
Education states that 60% of our engineers are ‘unemployable’.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every year 60 lakh engineers are prepared in
India. Their educational fee has not reduced at all. If they are unemployable
then it is the fault of engineering colleges. How have they prepared so bad
engineers even after taking lakhs of rupees as fees. There is no comment on
that. Now when there are no jobs in the market, they can start calling
engineers ineligible so that the market cannot be blamed. If 60% of our
engineers are useless, the institutions where they are produced should be shut
down. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Black
money and corruption</span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">What is more laughable than the claim of the
government to finish black money while it benefits illegally the big
capitalists. The truth is that a long time has passed since the news came of
many Indians having secret accounts in the Geneva, Switzerland branch of HSBC
bank. The names of many arms smugglers, drug dealers, and corrupt politicians
from around the world were revealed. In this list there were names of many big
industrialists and cinema stars of India. The government of India should have
taken strict legal action against these account holders after the list was made
public, but because these account holders were close to the government it
announced an option for them to declare the amount publicly. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Another list has also been made public of corrupt
politicians and illegal traders, smugglers from around the world who have
accounts in the country of Panama. After this news leaked, there were huge
outcries in countries like Russia and Pakistan. In India despite names of the
biggest industrialist and cinema stars etc the government has not taken any
strict action against them. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The government took the huge step of
‘demonetization’ with the claim of ending black money. The value of the notes
which were put out of circulation was 86% of the total currency. This step led
to an economic emergency in the country. More than 200 people died while
standing in queues to get their notes changes. Despite this the people who had
undeclared money in these notes were able to change or spend them successfully.
The owners of these undeclared assets paid their employees and workers months’
worth of advance salary and bonuses, changed it to gold and dollars and through
petrol pumps, and did not suffer any loss. The opposition parties did not enter
the policy aspects and depth of the issue and evaded effective action against
the issue. As a result, the government was successful in spreading the
misconception among the common poor people that this step will not harm the
general public much and will harm the rich. The truth I that the government has
not declared an exact number of the notes returned. SJP demands that the
government make public all the related facts and should make small currency
notes available. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When the Congress government was in power, the BJP
benefitted from the movement to create a Lokpal. Despite this no effective
legislation has been made for Lokpal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
big part of corruption is the undeclared contribution to political parties by
capitalists without revealing the source of the money. In this year’s finance
bill, it has been made legal to not announce the source of this money and for
it to be unlimited in amount. It is noteworthy that currently there is a cap on
the amount candidates can spend in elections but no limit to the expenditure of
parties and therefore the details of expenditure are not provided seriously.
During elections the ruling party spends crores of rupees to buy each leader of
the opposition party, therefore it has no interest in hampering the sources of
illegal undeclared income, but is actually making laws to make it easier to
furnish such funds. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Electoral
Reforms </span></u></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In the above paragraph<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the contexts of acquiring undeclared funds
for contesting elections and their uses have been mentioned. Samajwadi Jan
Parishad is in favor of adoption proportional representation in the electoral
process. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In India in each level of state/governance(like
Centre, State, District Council, Block Council and Panchayat) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the mode of elections is FPTP (First past the
post- the one who gets the most number of votes wins). The futuristic and
popular mode of elections is ‘proportional representation’ which is already in
use in 80 countries. The FPTP method is driving and increasing many weaknesses
and irregularities in India’s governance and democracy. It is producing very
dangerous situations in policymaking and change. Some facts – </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
Modi Government has got a majority in the parliament with the support of only
30% of the people. Around 60% population which is against it, has become
powerless and with very little representation in the house. New developing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ideologies and organizations with small
numbers find it impossible to reach the house and even keep their identities
intact.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In
each state government of the country also, one small party has reached majority
in this way with a small percentage of the votes. They also take many wrong and
undemocratic decisions like the central government. All these minority
governments make long lasting economic and administrative policies and programs
with social- religious connotations. They promote extremist tendencies which
often are deeply damaging to the country and society. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The party plans to organize
seminars and publish literature on this issue. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The people who promote narrow and divisive views in
Indian society, spread the ideas of the caste system, strengthen the religious
fiefdoms, spread communalism to promote politics of vested interests; their
politics is powerful today. If the politics of the weak and poor section which
Samajwadi Jan Parishad represents gets powerful; these sections will lose their
power and assets. We have to take this issue to the people. The interests of
the oppressed and the interests of the country are connected and mutual. We
will fight the politics of the rich classes with this kind of politics. We have
to establish this objective firmly in our minds. Just like the Capitalist and
Manuwadi powers have firmly established the aim of ‘Hindu Nation’ in their
minds, which will definitely lead to the destruction of the country. This
convention pledges to strengthen the politics of the oppressed sections to
defeat the current anti-national politics. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Proposer<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>- Aflatoon , Seconded by Kamal Banerjee</b></span></div>
</div>
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-64648196656980421832016-02-28T13:34:00.001+05:302016-02-28T13:34:17.801+05:30Open letter to Smriti Irani<p dir="ltr">An Open Letter to Ms. Smriti Irani</p>
<p dir="ltr">Dear Ms. Irani,</p>
<p dir="ltr">Thanks to your stunning performance, we, many faculty members from the University of Hyderabad, are compelled to do what we should have done in the last one month or so, but could not bring ourselves to – write, write about Rohith, write about our other students, write about the state of academics, write about ourselves and write about society at large. Our first acknowledgement to this therefore goes to you for revealing yourself and for bringing us back from grief, from reflection, from teaching and from various other mundane things we do as part of our job.<br>
As we watched you in disbelief on our TV screens on 24th February 2016, you in a voice choked with emotion, again and again referred to the "child" whose death has been used as a political weapon. We were left bewildered.<br>
At what precise point, Madam Minister, did this sinister, anti-national, casteist, Dalit student of the University of Hyderabad transform into a child for you? Definitely, not in those five rejoinders from MHRD between 03-09-2015 and 19-11- 2015 with the subject line "anti-national activities in Hyderabad Central University Campus"? Definitely, not when you chose to overlook and endorse what can only be read as extraordinarily aggressive and unfounded allegations by a minister in your own government, Mr. Bandaru Dattatreya? Ms. Irani, your constant reference to him as a child is nothing but a patronizing attempt to dehumanize his reality. It is also deeply disrespectful to Rohit's mother whose child he actually is - because she knows how ironic your appropriation of him is, considering your culpability in his death.<br>
Only after more than a month of his death Rohith becomes a 'child' for you “whose death was used as a political weapon.” A political weapon by whom, honourable Minister? By the other four students who were expelled with him and who spent those cold nights out in the makeshift velivada, with nothing but each other for company and succour? By the other students and friends who stood by him? Because you definitely seem to imply that when you say this child could possibly have been revived and yet his body was hidden and no doctor or police was allowed near him.<br>
By now incontrovertible facts have emerged that belie this.<br>
However, we would like to go beyond those facts and appeal to your heart. You were not there that night Respected Minister. You did not see the grief or the shock, nor were you there to feel the despair. How could you even begin to fathom how desperate students were when they called faculty members and medical doctor of the University's Health Centre as soon as Rohith's body was found hanging by students and security officials? As Dr. Rajyasree, Medical officer has stated, she rushed to the hostel at 7.30 pm and declared Rohith dead at 7.40 pm, all recorded in his case sheet on that fateful night of 17-01-2016. The police arrived at the scene immediately after this. Iraniji, it is beyond our simple comprehension to understand how you with your meticulous preparation evident in the Loksabha speech ignored these crucial medical documents / preliminary evidences. This also includes the post mortem report that declares Rohith was dead at least 18-24 hours before the body was examined the subsequent day. From all the medical and post mortem reports, statements by friends, faculty, and university officials – it is clear that Rohith's body was found hours after he hung himself.<br>
Not only are your claims factually incorrect but they point to an utter lack of respect and sensitivity for the grieving family, friends, and students. You are clearly disconnected from the heart breaking grief of his friends palpable to anyone present that night or the accompanying anger knowing the injustice that led to this tragedy. Does it befit our honourable minister to implicate these very grieving people in the death of their beloved friend?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Respected Minister, you have also repeatedly claimed that the committee which suspended Rohith Vemula and four other Dalit students was not constituted by your government, but by the UPA regime. You have also emphasised that there indeed was a Dalit faculty member in that committee.<br>
We are astounded that you can so smoothly pass on the responsibility for this tragedy to someone else. Being at the helm of MHRD, we are sure you must know that the Executive Council's Sub-Committee that took the fatal decision to suspend the Dalit students from hostels and other common spaces, was expressly constituted by the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Appa Rao, following five rejoinders from your ministry goading the University to take action against the Dalit students.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We may also point out that the two member committee constituted by the MHRD itself points out a curious anomaly -- the EC and its sub-committee is the very same body that recommends and ratifies – this simply cannot be.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Just in case your busy schedule has not allowed your attention to the following, permit us to point out further contradictions:</p>
<p dir="ltr">That this subcommittee was composed of all upper caste members except for one. We fail to understand how this one member is expected to overrule the will of five.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Most importantly, Prof. Prakash Babu, the sole Dalit member, was co-opted as the Dean, Students' Welfare and NOT as an SC/ST representative. Kindly refer to the constitution of the EC sub-committee in its minutes of meeting dated 24-11-2015.</p>
<p dir="ltr">That the EC sub-committee did not hear out the key stake holders or consider the counter-affidavit filed by the Commissioner of Police on 3rd October 2015 and simply concurred with the much contested Proctorial Board’s decision is matter for another enquiry.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Now let us come to the punishment itself. Let us think of the lives and struggles of the five boys who were suspended—four of them being sons of agricultural labourers and one without both parents. For them, suspension from hostel meant denial of food and shelter. Add to that, denial of right to access common spaces effectively amounted to social boycott in caste terms. Students who had surmounted unimaginable obstacles to reach the University were pushed back right into the velivada, the “untouchable” fringes of the village. Do you not believe that the administration should have reached out at least when Rohith wrote that 18th December 2015 letter asking the VC to provide Dalit students “sodium azide and a nice rope” at the time of admission itself? Ms. Irani, for all practical purposes, it was a cry for help. This was an opportunity for us to help this ‘child’ and we lost that opportunity. And, we have never heard you quote from this letter that was acknowledged as received by the VC’s office.</p>
<p dir="ltr">For a despondent, beleaguered Rohith, hounded and ignored by the powers that be, death was probably the only way to freedom and the limitless wonder and beauty of the universe that so moved him! Perhaps it was the only way out for someone as conscientious, brilliant, and reflective as Rohith was. This was Rohith’s assertion of dignity, a dignity that was not allowed to him or his friends in their lives. Their lives, in the words of Gopal Guru, mirrored social death, smeared with indignities of caste. To say that his ‘suicide note’ of 17-01-2016 does not name or implicate anyone amounts to gross opportunism and abandonment of moral responsibility.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Permit us to remind you dear minister that the VC did not think / feel it worthwhile enough to meet the grieving students on that fateful night. We are reminded ad nauseam of the threat that students posed to him and continue to pose to him. Students, who already had lost a dear friend, were accused by ABVP of violence, and this is important – students who throughout their struggle since those intense first days following Rohith’s death until now – have maintained their poise, their maturity through all their struggles and protests, have never resorted to violence. Could the Vice Chancellor of the University not meet and console them in that most vulnerable, heart breaking moment? Even when nearly 300 teachers requested the VC to come and assured him of a space to meet students along with them, the VC’s sense of authority prevailed over his sense of duty and responsibility. This was a defining moment Ms. Irani, when the VC could have regained his moral stature and humanity in the eyes of the students. He clearly let history slip through of his fingers.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Rohith is not there with us anymore. His four friends suspended along with him are, his larger group of friends in this University and growing group of friends across the country are. What we expect from you is very minimal. Do not turn this into a fight against students who have nothing to rely upon, no power – political or social, no connections, no money, not even a home. Please understand this -- the minority status you love to claim for yourself cannot in any way be equated with the state of disprivilege and dispossession that many of these students battle on a daily basis. All our students have is the hope of a future which education can possibly bring -- to quote Rohith “from shadows to the stars” Do not blight their hopes, their dreams. Help us ensure each one of us is sensitive to cater to their needs inside classrooms, in labs, in hostels, outside, everywhere. As teachers, as ministers we have much more to offer – truth, equality, justice, hope, and inspiration. Not melodrama.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The Prime Minister has extoled your speech tweeting “Satyameva Jayathe”. Whose Truth? We ask.</p>
<p dir="ltr">26-02-2016 <br>
SC/ST Teachers’ Forum &<br>
Concerned Faculty, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad.</p>
<p dir="ltr">-- <br>
"Only when the last tree has died, and the last river poisoned, will we realize that we cannot eat money."</p>
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-704888487137542362016-02-22T11:14:00.001+05:302016-02-22T11:14:22.149+05:30तब और अब<p dir="ltr">Now last but not the least, it is my bounden duty to refer to what agitated our minds during these two or three days. All of us have had many anxious moments while the Viceroy was going through the streets of Banaras. There were detectives stationed in many places. We were horrified. We asked ourselves, “Why this distrust?” Is it not better that even Lord Hardinge should die than live a living death? But a representative of a mighty sovereign may not. He might find it necessary to impose these detectives on us? We may foam, we may fret, we may resent, but let us not forget that India of today in her impatience has produced an army of anarchists. I myself am an anarchist, but of another type. But there is a class of anarchists amongst us, and if I was able to reach this class, I would say to them that their anarchism has no room in India, if India is to conqueror. It is a sign of fear. If we trust and fear God, we shall have to fear no one, not the Maharajas, not the Viceroys, not the detectives, not even King George.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I honour the anarchist for his love of the country. I honour him for his bravery in being willing to die for his country; but I ask him-is killing honourable? Is the dagger of an assassin a fit precursor of an honourable death? I deny it. There is no warrant for such methods in any scriptures. If I found it necessary for the salvation of India that the English should retire, that they should be driven out, I would not hesitate to declare that they would have to go, and I hope I would be prepared to die in defence of that belief. That would, in my opinion, be an honourable death. The bomb-thrower creates secret plots, is afraid to come out into the open, and when caught pays the penalty of misdirected zeal.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I have been told, “Had we not done this, had some people not thrown bombs, we should never have gained what we have got with reference to the partition movement.” (Mrs. Besant : ‘Please stop it.’) This was what I said in Bengal when Mr. Lyon presided at the meeting. I think what I am saying is necessary. If I am told to stop I shall obey. (Turning to the Chairman) I await your orders. If you consider that by my speaking as I am, I am not serving the country and the empire I shall certainly stop. (Cries of ‘Go on.’) (The Chairman : ‘Please, explain your object.’) I am simply. . . (another interruption). My friends, please do not resent this interruption. If Mrs. Besant this evening suggests that I should stop, she does so because she loves India so well, and she considers that I am erring in thinking audibly before you young men. But even so, I simply say this, that I want to purge India of this atmosphere of suspicion on either side, if we are to reach our goal; we should have an empire which is to be based upon mutual love and mutual trust. Is it not better that we talk under the shadow of this college than that we should be talking irresponsibly in our homes? I consider that it is much better that we talk these things openly. I have done so with excellent results before now. I know that there is nothing that the students do not know. I am, therefore, turning the searchlight towards ourselves. I hold the name of my country so dear to me that I exchange these thoughts with you, and submit to you that there is no room for anarchism in India. Let us frankly and openly say whatever we want to say our rulers, and face the consequences if what we have to say does not please them. But let us not abuse.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I was talking the other day to a member of the much-abused Civil Service. I have not very much in common with the members of that Service, but I could not help admiring the manner in which he was speaking to mw. He said : “Mr. Gandhi, do you for one moment suppose that all we, Civil Servants, are a bad lot, that we want to oppress the people whom we have come to govern?” “No,,” I said. “Then if you get an opportunity put in a word for the much-abused Civil Service.” And I am here to put in that word. Yes, many members of the Indian Civil Service are most decidedly overbearing; they are tyrannical, at times thoughtless. Many other adjectives may be used. I grant all these things and I grant also that after having lived in India for a certain number of years some of them become somewhat degraded. But what does that signify? They were gentlemen before they came here, and if they have lost some of the moral fibre, it is a reflection upon ourselves.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Just think out for yourselves, if a man who was good yesterday has become bad after having come in contact with me, is he responsible that he has deteriorated or am I? The atmosphere of sycophancy and falsity that surrounds them on their coming to India demoralizes them, as it would many of us. It is well to take the blame sometimes. If we are to receive self-government, we shall have to take it. We shall never be granted self-government. Look at the history of the British Empire and the British nation; freedom loving as it is, it will not be a party to give freedom to a people who will not take it themselves. Learn your lesson if you wish to from the Boer War. Those who were enemies of that empire only a few years ago have now become friends. . . .</p>
<p dir="ltr">(At this point there was an interruption and a movement on the platform to leave. The speech, therefore, ended here abruptly.)</p>
<p dir="ltr">Mahatma, pp. 179-84, Edn. 1960.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This speech is from selected works of Mahatma Gandhi Volume-Six</p>
<p dir="ltr">The Voice of Truth Part-I some Famous Speech page 3 to 13</p>
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-41577890109482914232016-01-18T17:36:00.000+05:302016-01-18T17:36:21.722+05:30Last Words of Rohith Vemula<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h3>
Good morning,</h3>
I would not be around when you read this letter. Don’t get angry on
me. I know some of you truly cared for me, loved me and treated me very
well. I have no complaints on anyone. It was always with myself I had
problems. I feel a growing gap between my soul and my body. And I have
become a monster. I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science,
like Carl Sagan. At last, this is the only letter I am getting to write.
<br />
<div class="perfect-pullquote vcard pullquote-align-right">
<blockquote>
I always wanted to be a writer. A writer of science, like Carl Sagan.</blockquote>
</div>
I loved Science, Stars, Nature, but then I loved people without knowing
that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are
second handed. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs colored. Our
originality valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult
to love without getting hurt.
The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest
possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated
as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In very field, in
studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.<br />
I am writing this kind of letter for the first time. My first time of a final letter. Forgive me if I fail to make sense.<br />
<div class="perfect-pullquote vcard pullquote-align-full">
<blockquote>
My birth is my fatal accident. I can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child from my past.</blockquote>
</div>
May be I was wrong, all the while, in understanding world. In
understanding love, pain, life, death. There was no urgency. But I
always was rushing. Desperate to start a life. All the while, some
people, for them, life itself is curse. My birth is my fatal accident. I
can never recover from my childhood loneliness. The unappreciated child
from my past.<br />
I am not hurt at this moment. I am not sad. I am just empty.
Unconcerned about myself. That’s pathetic. And that’s why I am doing
this.<br />
<br />
<br />
<img alt="objects in mirror are (never) closer than they appear. (From Rohit's Facebook Wall)" class="size-full wp-image-3085" height="320" src="http://raiot.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/12484718_10208317828211851_1597160127773765840_o.jpg" width="320" /><br />
People may dub me as a coward. And selfish, or stupid once I am gone.
I am not bothered about what I am called. I don’t believe in
after-death stories, ghosts, or spirits. If there is anything at all I
believe, I believe that I can travel to the stars. And know about the
other worlds.<br />
If you, who is reading this letter can do anything for me, I have to
get 7 months of my fellowship, one lakh and seventy five thousand
rupees. Please see to it that my family is paid that. I have to give
some 40 thousand to Ramji. He never asked them back. But please pay that
to him from that.<br />
<br />
Let my funeral be silent and smooth. Behave like I just appeared and
gone. Do not shed tears for me. Know that I am happy dead than being
alive.<br />
“From shadows to the stars.”<br />
Uma anna, sorry for using your room for this thing.<br />
To ASA family, sorry for disappointing all of you. You loved me very much. I wish all the very best for the future.<br />
For one last time,<br />
Jai Bheem<br />
I forgot to write the formalities. No one is responsible for my this act of killing myself.<br />
No one has instigated me, whether by their acts or by their words to this act.<br />
This is my decision and I am the only one responsible for this.<br />
Do not trouble my friends and enemies on this after I am gone.<br />
<img alt="Expelled_students_forced_to_vacate_hostels" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3086" height="320" src="http://raiot.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Expelled_students_forced_to_vacate_hostels.jpg" width="240" /><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Chittibabu Padavala <em>writes: Scientist, activist and Ambedkar Students Association leader <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=1488562725" href="https://www.facebook.com/rohith352">Rohith Vemula</a> was found dead in a hostel room on the University of Hyderabad campus.<span class="text_exposed_show">Suicide!
He was one of the activists on hunger strike from yesterday on the
campus against the illegal and demonstrably false case framed against
them by the administration. Rohith went out of the tent to a hostel and
hanged himself, leaving a suicide note. It was at the behest of BJP
leader Bandaru Datttreya, the puppet VC started persecuting these
students/scholars. This scandal was exposed in the media recently too.<br />
</span>Rohith was one of the five student leaders who were served
suspension notice recently by the University of Hyderabad’s
administration. A fellow activist says it is nothing but a murder.
Indeed, it is.</em><br />
<em>University students gathered at the moment at Rohith’s hostel. They
are refusing to let Rohith’s dead body be removed unit Vice-Chancellor
is present.</em><br />
<em>Among us, younger generation of Dalit Marxists, Rohith alone is the
man of action while most of the rest of us are either taking a break or
retired. None ever doubted for a moment that it would be Rohith who
would formulate and put to practice the right and effective political
paradigm on central universities in Hindutva times. He embodied the rare
combination of energy, intellect, principled conception of politics and
open-mind among the campus Dalit leaders.</em><br />
<em>One of the reasons for which Rohith and others were persecuted by
the administration is that he was seriously organising campaigns and
programs to highlight persecution of, and discrimination against Muslims
and worked to bring Dalits and Muslims together to combat it, on campus
level. If these activists are not Dalits and their fight was not
against Hindutva fascism, this false case and persecution of Dalit
scholars would have attracted national and international attention and
outcry.</em><br />
<em>I am unable to completely believe this actually happened and Rohith
is dead. I still hope against hope that there will be another call
cancelling this unmanageable blow to the student movement and also one
that strikes some of us very personally. Legendary student leader Dr. <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=753669914" href="https://www.facebook.com/vulli.dhanaraj">Vulli Dhanaraju</a>
is devastead. He knows Rohith well and Dhanaraju says this shocking
action uncharacteristic of and unexpected from somebody like Rohith must
be to highlight the unprecedented and unacceptable things happening on
the campuses and call national and international attention to them and
to shake the conscience of the public, including the Dalit faculty on
campuses. He also points that though suicides of Dalits students and
scholars are not unknown, it is never Dalit activists and leaders who
kill themselves. It is a first, at least in a Central Institute, he
says. For the veteran student leader, what Rohith has done is a supreme
sacrifice and not any act of desperation. There should be a case against
the criminal VC and he must be made to resign.</em><br />
<em>I am unable to absorb the fact that Rohith is no more. Cannot say
anything at the moment. The struggle is on. University of Hyderabad
students are fighting. Support and solidarity to them.</em><br />
<em>I have been arguing for a long-time that the real solution to the
suicides for Dalit students on the campuses – before the ultimate
solution of the end to discrimination – Dalits should own up their
untouchable identity openly and proudly and take to activism as Dalits.
Now, here is my own friend and dear comrade, a student leader of
national standing and achievement, a bright and promising Dalit Marxist,
kills himself!! It is difficult to take. We will ensure that your death
is not in vain, comrade <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=1488562725" href="https://www.facebook.com/rohith352">Rohith Vemula</a>!</em>
<br />
</blockquote>
</div>
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-7166613582048774392014-07-22T18:12:00.000+05:302015-03-27T08:39:40.343+05:30DOES THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM NEED AN IDEOLOGY : Kishan Pattanayak<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have come to attend
the 4th WSF as an observer and in the capacity of a member of the NAPM
(National Alliance) of People's Movement, India) My political
organisation SJP (Samajwadi Jan Parishad), whose ideology can be called
socialism as modified by Gandhism, is not very enthusiastic about the
world conference. Neither does it reject the WSF as wholly irrelevant or
reactionary. A practical reason for SJP not carrying out a strategy to
take part in WSF is that participating effectively in this conference is
financially in this conference is financially unaffordable for the SJP.
I have decided to come and attend because I can afford to travel to the
venue and spend a week here. the next the future world conference will
be held in far away countries. Going there will be beyond my means. I
did want to miss this one. My curiosity is positive. <br />
A few groups in
India with whom I have good relations are mobilizing a resistance
(Mumbai Resistance, MR 2004) to the WSF. They have some serious
allegations against the character and compositions of the WSF. I cannot
subscribe to these allegations even though a few of them are not
unfounded. A brochure published on behalf of Resistance goes to the
extent of alleging that the protagonists of globalization have actually
initiated the WSF process with a view to taming the anti-globalization
wave. This statement is either absurd or irrelevant. What is important
is not who started and with what intent, but how the process in being
carried forward, and with what outcome. Recent events in the world have
shown that inspite of the universal discontent against Globalization
there is hardly any organized, continuous resistance to the imposition
of anti-people economic policies that almost all the nations are
experiencing. Outside Latin America. people's anger against economic
imperialism is nowhere reflected in the nations' politics. In such a
situation of inaction any organisation or institution which brings
together, periodically, critics of globalization from all corners of the
world is doing us good simply by providing opportunities of solidarity.
Critics my be just critics, they may not even be antagonists. The motto
"another world is possible" does not deter them so long as the contents
of change are not deeply debated.<br />
The question at this stage is not
whether opportunistic elements have infiltrated into the WSF. We have to
search out whether some healthy, genuinely radical trends are gradually
making headway and an international force against globalization is
taking concrete shape as a result of the solidarity and interactions
over the past four years. Is there a real sense of arriving at a
world-wide consensus on radical policies which will inspire people of
various countries not only to resist globalization but also to
articulate the outlines of new economic society based on the principles
of equality ?<br />
The NGO Factor<br />
The overwhelming presence of the
NGOs, liberally founded by donors of rich countries, is a major source
of worry, I don't know if NGOs of other perceived by radical groups as
the agents of western capitalism. This is an embarrassing subject
because so many of our deal and esteemed friends are part of the NGOs.
This is an embarrassing subject because so many of our dear and esteemed
friends are part of the NGOs. Perhaps they have to be kept there to
impart a progressive image to the organisations concerned. Sometimes it
may so happen that one or two personalities associated with a NGO are
incorruptible and beyond reproach, but the bulk of the activities and
managers belong to the average run to NGO cadre. The NGOs, by the large,
have to function within the development objective set by the World
Bank. When Radical movements are going on in the society, the NGOs may
associate with anti-establishment agitation in order to save their
progressive credentials. This is remarkably illustrated in radical
situation when movements are totally absent. If the USA is supporting a
military rule and there is no political force there to resist it, the
NGOs also tend to forget about democracy. Globalization with a human
face, capitalist development accompanied by programmes of eradicating
poverty -this is the ideology if NGOs in the developing countries.
Needless to say, some of them can easily be covered into agents of the
establishment against revolutionary and patriot movements at crucial
times. Therefore it can be said with apologies to those elements in the
NGOs who are genuinely radical, that the resentment against the
disproportionate presence of NGOs in the WSF is not without valid
reasons.<br />
It is natural for groups starved of funds to be suspicious
of NGO delegates who spend money on their travel, accommodation and
activities in a manner similar to what government and corporate
delegates do. It may be asked if it is bad to have more money ? This is a
serious question. Some organisations, like mine, may be inefficient and
incapable of collecting funds for meeting the minimum needs of
functioning effectively. But even the best of the organisations in a
poor country will find it hard to make both ends meet if it has to
remain independent, radical and uncompromising. The deplorable aspect of
the fund of eminent NGOs, is that all the funds come from outside. The
local society does not contributes at all. When the personal lifestyles
and organisational expenses do not reflect any of the constraints of
poverty that pervades all around, that itself becomes a source of
suspicion, a potential for future compromises.<br />
It is another thing
that NGOs cannot be wished away. But their limitations must be kept in
mind while coexisting with them. The NGOs may constitute the majority of
the delegates to the WSF. But is there also an assertive minority
consisting of the genuinely radical elements ? No doubt they are there,
but are they visible, as distinct from the NGO crowd ? Discussion on
environmental damage, gender inequality and racial prejudice are
commendable exercises, and must find a place in the radical ideology.
But the WSF will be credited with a special role only if it devises a
strategy for fighting against the economic globalization of poor
countries, which means fighting against the WTO, World Bank and
IMF-against world capitalism in short. Is this question central to the
deliberation and activities of the WSF ? Most of the critics of
globalization who attend similar conferences are hesitant to clarify if
they really oppose the WTO, and if they have a programme to end
capitalism and its global integration. The euphoria around Cancun
exposed that the concessions are granted to the weaker nations. In this
context. the slogan, "Another world is possible" doe not hold much
uttered first, If you go on repeating the slogan without concretizing
the change that is visualized, it loses the original ethos. It may not
mean anything after some time.<br />
Failure of the Non-NGO groups<br />
The
failure of the WSF is the failure to initiate a credible process of
formulating a strategy for opposing the world economic system. By not
some economic goals should have been laid down and popularized. It has
not even been established whether economic equality is a valid idea as
part of the goal of drastically reducing the disparities between
nations, regions and classes. If disparities are to be done away with,
what happens to prosperity ? For prosperity without any limit means
basically the centralizing wealth and production. Modern technology
specializes in centralizing wealth and its production. So ending
inequality will necessitate a radical change in the use of technologies.
The leftists of the twentieth century, the socialists and communists
could not resolve this dilemma. So they met a dead end.<br />
The WSF will
have to being where twentieth century socialism stopped. It not only
stopped, it collapsed under the weight of unanswered questions and
unresolved contradictions. It could not reconcile the pursuit of modern
prosperity will the goal the economic equality. The lure of prosperity
and modern technology is so great that successful socialists everywhere
have bowed to the market and postponed the ideas of equality.<br />
Organizing
struggles is one part of resisting globalization, but the other part is
ideological. If a party or coalition of parties is able to gain popular
support and comes to power in a developing country on the promise of
fighting globalization, how does it put this into practice ? What should
a patriotic, anti-imperialist government do in respect of foreign
capital and foreign loans ? If the goal is to achieve modern prosperity,
the country may need more loans and more foreign capital. Then its
dependence on foreign powers and centres of world capitalism will
increase. Will the WSF advices such a government not to go in for modern
prosperity. <br />
Take the example of my own state, Orissa. It is a very
poor and backward state, but it has rich bauxite deposits. Aluminum
multinationals are ready to come and make Orissa a source of great
wealth. Globalization has promoted the government of Orrisa to invite
the multinationals. But the tribal inhabitants have resisted, and
managed to prevent this mining in a number of cases. If they yield they
will be wiped out. They will never get back a satisfying community if
they agree to be displaced. Will the deliberations in the and government
on this issue, but may not be more about displacement and less about
mining itself. What has mining done to the people everywhere ? What has
mining done to poor and backward regions like Orissa ? And what has it
done for the powerful nations? A fundamental questioning of the basic
assumptions about mining will raise new ideological questions. One of
these is whether mining should be stopped altogether in regions like
Orissa, at least for the present period. Critics of globalization may
not like to debate on this. Every leftist inheriting the 20th Century
mind-set will say, "Mining is inevitable". This statement breaks the
barrier between rightists and leftists. It is the modern mind, addicted
to the idea of great prosperity and centralized wealth, which unites
them. Even MR 2004 which is opposing the WSF may be different on this
question.<br />
Why should mining be inevitable ? How much of the annual
production of Aluminum goes to boost the war industry and the luxurious
living of the rich ? If war and luxurious are not inevitable, why should
mining be inevitable ? Can we not reduce mining to its one hundredth
part? It mining is reduced to a bare minimum it will be qualitatively a
very different thing. It may lose the cruelty and glamour associated
with modern mining. <br />
The 20th century radicals did not bother about
this aspect because they tended to believe that you can use modern
technology anywhere you like and produce great wealth and then
distributed that wealth by using state power. This illusion has been
belied, but no proper debate has yet taken place. We know now that we
cannot acquire the technology unless the multinationals are willing to
give it. They do not give it cheaply, so when we start using the
technology, the mining process itself gives rise to so many
inequalities.<br />
In non-technical language, globalization means
integrating the developing economies with the world's most powerful
economies. This process benefits the powerful economies in a total
manner, and it is they who take all the initiatives. Others either okay
the proposal or seek concessions and moderation. Whenever the
superpowers concede in a small way, it is considered a big achievement
for the poor country. Is the WSF, or some significant part of it, going
to take a stand NOT to integrate poor countries' economies with the most
powerful economies ? If it does, it will have to give a call to the
developing countries to quit the WTO. A debate on this is not yet on the
agenda of the WSF.<br />
An ideology for the WSF will be evolved if statements of policy are laid down in response to the following propositions : <br />
1. We should advocate a policy of quitting the W.T.O.<br />
2. Patriotic governments of developing nations should adopt a policy to stop asking for loans from the World Bank / IMF.<br />
3.
The whole world needs a civilization change, marked by the reduction of
economic disparities between nations and classes. Towards this, the WSF
should strengthen and sharpen the concepts of (1) small and appropriate
technology and (2) self-reliant communities which will produce all
basic necessities of life in their own respective regions. <br />
4. There
should be no global trade in articles of daily necessity that can be
produced in every region. Even trade within the nation should adopt the
economic philosophy of self-reliance of the communities.<br />
5. Trades and markets desist from multiplying human wants and commercializing the basic elements of nature like air and water.<br />
6. Mining must be drastically reduced so as to bring about a qualitative change in its impact on people and business.<br />
And
so on. The WSF should provides an atmosphere for the launching of a
strategy of ideas and actions that will define a break with the old
order the concepts that shaped it, " Another World" must mean another
civilization. The same appeal is extended to Mumbai Resistance 2004
(Mr-4). We are not convinced that Mr-4 is armed with a vision that will
replace the present global economy. Centralization of wealth production
and the desire for limitless prosperity was the economic aim that
inspired both America and the Soviet Union in the20th century. America
has now risen to the status of a global empire, and the Soviet Union has
collapsed. The peoples of the world, especially those of the third
world, need a new philosophy of sustainable living and sustainable
production. Without this basic component, socialism cannot be revived in
the 21st century. So both MR 2004 and the radicals inside WSF are
facing the same challenge.<br />
KISHEN PATTNAYAK<br />
Bhubaneswar<br />
E-mail : patanaik_kishen@vsnl.ne</div>
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-40181860735996220012014-06-06T06:33:00.001+05:302014-06-06T06:33:38.430+05:30Concerned IT professionals' statement on hate crime in Pune<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">We,
the undersigned express our deep shock at the gruesome incident of hate
crime reported in the city of Pune earlier this week. A 28 year old IT
professional Shaikh Mohsin Sadiq was thrashed to death by a group of
people suspected to be connected with a radical Hindu outfit called
Hindu Rashtra Sena.</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mohsin was reportedly returning home after offering <i>namaz</i> at a mosque on Monday night
when he found himself caught by the mob. As is the case in every hate
crime, a skull cap on head and beard were enough for the killers to
pounce on him with deadly intentions. The city was witnessing <i>bandh</i> and
violent street protests by Shiv Sena, BJP and other radical Hindu
organizations in the wake of Facebook post(s) with allegedly derogatory
references to Shivaji and former Shiva Sena Chief Bal Thackeray. The
assailants were apparently involved in similar protests when they
spotted Mohsin on Monday night in Bankar colony in Hadapsar area of Pune.</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">One
cannot help seeing this incident vis-à-vis forthcoming assembly
elections in Maharashtra. As a run-up to the elections which are due in a
few months, an attempt to polarize the masses on communal lines with
the sheer intention of electoral gains, as we have seen elsewhere, seems
to be on the cards. We appeal to the state government to thwart any
such attempts with alacrity while ensuring safety to every citizen; we
also appeal to the people of Maharashtra to not fall prey to such
hideous designs and uphold the progressive tradition of the state that
has seen peaceful co-existence of various sects, religions and cultural
groups with no place for hatred.</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">While
offering our deepest condolences to the bereaved family members and
friends of Mohsin, we extend our heartfelt solidarity to each and every
member of minorities/disadvantaged communities in struggle to preserve
the values of democracy, secularism and justice.</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sd/—</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Neeraj Kholiya</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Dhanesh Birajdar</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Bharatbhooshan Tiwari</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Nitin Agarwal</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Vinod Pillai</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Kamesh</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Gokul Panigrahi</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Rajat Johari</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ujjwal Barapatre</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Kshitij Patil</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sanind Shaikh</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Akbar Ali</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Prince Shelley</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mohamed Shazad</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">Shaikh Asfaque Hossain</span></div>
<div style="background-image: initial; background-repeat: initial; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 10pt;">( For widest possible circulation ) </span></div>
</div>
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6213570.post-58375474700039694052014-06-04T22:59:00.001+05:302014-06-04T22:59:28.151+05:30Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression's complaint to Delhi Police Commissioner<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div>
<strong>4 June 2014</strong><br />
<br />
<strong>The Commissioner of Police</strong><br />
<strong>Delhi Police</strong><br />
<br />
<strong>Subject: Sexual assault on women protestors by personnel of Parliament Street police station </strong><br />
<br />
We
are writing to demand your immediate action against police personnel of
the Parliament Street Police Station who were involved in assaulting
and brutalising a peaceful group of protestors today.<br />
<br />
The facts are as follows.<br />
<ul>
<li>A
group of people belonging to the Dalit community from Bhagana village,
Haryana, have been sitting in a peaceful dharna at Jantar Mantar for
the last one month, in pursuit of their demand for justice in the case
of abduction and gang rape of four minor girls. Early this morning, a
large force of policemen appeared at Jantar Mantar and tried to evict
the protestors who were sleeping there. pulled down their tent and
scattered their belongings.</li>
<li>The Bhagana protestors
(including the families of the rape survivors and the girls themselves)
went to the Parliament Street Police Station this afternoon at about
1400 hours, in order to present a memorandum to the officer in charge
asking to be allowed to stay in Jantar Mantar since they had nowhere
else to go.</li>
<li>The Bhagana group was accompanied by
representatives of women's organisations, Dalit organisations and
students' organisations. The mothers of two of the rape survivors were
leading the group.</li>
<li>The group was stopped by some policemen at the barricade outside the <span>thana</span>.
Their request to be allowed to go inside and meet the office in
charge was denied. Some policemen on duty at the barricade spoke to the
Bhagana group in Haryanvi and asked them to go back and not to make
trouble. The women argued with these policemen, insisting on being
allowed to go and meet the officer in charge.</li>
<li>While the
argument was going on, some policemen started pushing the group back
from the barricade, using undue force and targeting the women by
grabbing their private parts and pushing their hands into the anal
region. The mothers of the survivors and several women activists
(including Adv Pyoli Swatija of Samajwadi Jan Parishad, , Ms Sumedha
Baudh of Rashtiya Dalit Mahila Andolan and Ms Rakhi – of NTUI) were
attacked in this manner.</li>
<li>At this point a senior police officer (in uniform but without a name badge) came out and shouted out - “<em>Are ye aise nahi manenge - lathi ghusao.</em>”</li>
<li>At
this, some 4-5 women police charged forward and attacked the women by
thrusting at their private parts with batons. The women who were in the
front resisted this attack and struggled with the police women.
Several policemen were also in the melee and were physically attacking
women protestors.</li>
<li>Several activists were taken into custody and held for more than an hour, after which they<br />
were released without any charge being made against them.</li>
<li>None
of the police had name badges except one police woman (Suman D) who
removed it after a few minutes. However, we are confident that we can
identify most if not all the attackers by face including the officer
who gave the order for the sexual attack.</li>
</ul>
<br />
You
are surely aware that the acts committed by the policemen and women are
criminal offences under the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013.<br />
<br />
<strong>We
demand that the concerned police personnel (including the officer who
gave the order for sexual assault) be immediately suspended from service
and charged under the relevant sections. An FIR should be filed and an
enquiry instituted without delay.</strong><br />
<br />
We are shocked
to see that the police personnel under your command seem to have
forgotten the bitter lessons of December 2012, and are blatantly
ignoring and violating citizens' rights of peaceful assembly and
democratic protest.<br />
<br />
We are told that much time and
resources have been invested in training the rank and file of Delhi
police in “gender-sensitive policing”. Our suggestion to you is: please
do not waste any more of the taxpayers' money on these futile public
relations exercises. Instead, please take strong, immediate and
exemplary action against personnel accused of such crimes.<br />
<br />
We look forward to a response from you. We will be happy to come and present you with evidence in support of our complaint.<br />
(KALYANI MENON-SEN)<br />
<br />
<strong>On behalf of Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression</strong><br />
<span><strong>Complainants:</strong><strong>KALYANI MENON-SEN</strong> (J-1229 Palam Vihar Gurgaon 122017) </span><strong>Adv Pyoli Swatija</strong> (Flat 808 Gaur Ganga I, Vaishali Sector 4, Ghaziabad)</div>
</div>
</div>
अफ़लातूनhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027328950261133052noreply@blogger.com0