The CPM Question : Why Is It Called So
And Why Mamata Must Be Made To Answer It
By Siddharthya Swapan Roy
07 June, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Beyond the exasperating comedy of Mamata Banerjee screaming, threatening and making faces at students invited to question her during her (now infamous) interview with CNN-IBN's SagarikaGhose, lies a rather serious question pertaining to the course of public debate in India;one that threatens the very existence of public debate.
That debates in news media are purposefully polarised by anchors and editors in the interest of TRP, readership and other indices linked with profit, is now an acknowledged fact.But the stance taken by Mamata Banerjee in the said debate does not entirely fall under this category. Her behaviour is part of a trend wherein one party actively works towards disparaging her political opposition and taking away their space.
The Right in India , as elsewhere, is one of the earliest practitioners of this devious art. When the atomic bombs were test fired in Pokhran, the BJP launched into a campaign that attempted to claim support for the bomb as the sole criteria for nationalism. Whether by claiming opposition to Hindutva violence as opposition to Hinduism itself, or by claiming that those who do not sing VandeMataram are not Indians, the members of the SanghParivar have always used this illegitimating of the opposition as a weapon in their debates.
On the Left, parties and factions thereof, have entire lexica dedicated to illegitimating the opposition. She is a bourgeois of such and such creed as per the minutes of meeting of the nth international and she therefore need not be engaged with in debates or her ideas given space for expression. During the peak of the Naxal movement the followers of Charu Mazumdar regularly branded people they didn't agree with as “class enemies” and then proceeded to kill them – mostly physically but also intellectually.
Even if we do not refer to how the imposition of Emergency by Indira Gandhi led Congress is till date the biggest attempt at illegitimating the opposition, we can every single day still see the process at work in the public display of obsequiousness to the Gandhi-Nehru family. HRD minister Kapil Sibal woke up to the “pressing need” of curtailing social media only after the instances of morphed images and posters derisive of Sonia Gandhi and family started floating around freely. The Congress confidently spoke on behalf of “the people” that seeing such posters and images would offend the sense of obeisance which the people allegedly have for Madame and her folks. The thread of logic that runs through this act is “sine you are critical of the dynasty that rules Congress your opposition is vile and hence you need not be given space”.
The same devious logic runs through a host of regional parties that stand on the basis of caste, religion, language, geographical location and other identity. Every now and then they get emotionally aggrieved by some act or statement of their opposition.Thereafter armed with hurt sentiments they label the opposition as anti-their-identity and hence an illegitimate voice.
The acts of Mamata Banerjee and her party men are part of this process. Recall the recent incident when the Trinamool Congress' English TV face Derek O'brein hollered into the cameras of CNN-IBN stressing how he will not sit beside a CPI(M) MP. He pronounced each word in threatening quanta into the face of his audience to underscore how as a matter of fact the CPI(M), his opposition, is an untouchable – an illegitimate voice. The same was done by other visible TMC faces, even though regional, Jyotipriya Mallick and Kalyan Banerjee. While the former branded the opposition as socially untouchable in a cultural sense by using a fatwa to not establish nuptial relations or engage in other social exchanges; the latter, a known foul mouth, threatened to brand, in a literal physical sense, the opposition by tattooing the word CPM on their foreheads – akin to how it was done in vile yesteryears to those deemed criminals.
At this point we will do well to examine the case of United States of America and its branding of communists. Thanks to its formal persecution of leftists during its two Red Scares (1919 to 1921 and then 1947 to 1957) being “communist” is in itself equal to being wrong. Even though the legal and para-legal framework (aka McCarthysim) with which this persecution was achieved has now been done away with, the cultural impact remains visible till date. Even though it is not a legal offence to be a communist in the USA it is often enough to be a pariah.
But that's not the case in India . All through India 's history since the 1920s Communist have been a visible and open part of modern India . Leaders from the ranks of Communist parties, as with all other parties from Right to Left, continue to receive popular support and are installed in positions of varying power and influence both in history and modernity. Despite the political disagreement, opposition and rivalry which other political groups and streams harbourtowards the Communists and their ideology (and they have a right to do so) it is impossible to ignore them and refuse to engage with them in debate.
What we have in the case of Mamata Banerjee and her TMC is something on the lines of the Red Scare.They have embarked on a mission to render the Communists – her opposition – socially illegitimate. Rob them of their space and voice in the sphere of public debates. This is what is borne out when she rents the air in her trademark mannerisms and speech labelling uncomfortable questions as “CPM koschen” and “Maoist koschen” and the questioners as “kadars” (cadres).One can also refer to the more direct example of MamataBenrjee issuing a diktat to re-write history textbooks expunging the references to Marx and Engels (later changed to ‘reducing the focus'). The attempt is to make words like “communist” “cpm” “cadres” and the like pejoratives.Riding on the wave of anti-Left Front sentiment that led to her election she and her team hope to achieve this intellectual blacklisting of sorts thus effectively making her political existence unopposed.
Beyond the ambit of political affiliation and/or agreement and disagreement with specific parties and their lines, this undoubtedly poses a grave threat to public discourse.Historically public discourse in India has been more or less inclusive. Even though certain groups may be severely disadvantaged, or even completely unrepresented when it comes to actual acts of governance like formulation of laws and policies, debates that lead up to or follow such decisions tended to be have had representation.For example, the only thing that comes close to embodying the rather blurred idea called India and serves as the sole formal common ground for the coexistence of disparate peoples is the Indian Constitution, Indian public discourse has been accommodative even of those who have openly opposed that very Constitution – for example the SanghParivar on the Right and the Naxalite/Maoist tendencies on the Left.Even in early history the Lokayata and Sankhya schools contested the theistic ideas of the political rulers of that time but were given space in debates. From the courts of emperors like Ashoka and Akbar to intense debates within the fora of the pre-independence Indian Congress on to the letters to editors and the current era of commenting on posts,this agreement to hear each party out is a traditional practice of India . A practice which has yielded and helped sustain whatever is best in Indian democracy.
For very obvious reasons this practice has its share of the disaffected. Business tycoons are often seen grumbling about excessive democracy (and debate thereof) in India 's politics. Governments such as the one led by Manmohan Singh who seekfast track changes in trade agreements, labour laws and rollback of state supported public welfare so as to favour liberalisation, publicly express disapproval of parliamentarians' habit of debate and opposition labelling disagreement as disruption.
The classical method of manufacturing consent by surreptitious Gobbelesian means was used – for example paid news was seen as an invaluable measure at consent building. But mainly due to the efforts of non-conformists within the journalistic community and partly due to the competitive nature of the media market, these efforts are quickly unravelling and the commercial media itself stands discredited due to those attempts. This non-conformism and scepticism is a bright aspect of India 's plural culture.
So for the disaffected, to make the opposition go away, they need to bring about a change in that culture. And they are at it.
The author is a freelance writer and political activist. He's reachable at [email protected]
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