Ek revolutionary ki mauth…

I took some time to write about Kanu Sanyal, one of the fathers of what is arguably the only genuine revolutionary insurrection in post-independence India. I took some time to write about his death not only because it was a suicide but also because writing about the death of a revolutionary means bringing in his life as well…

Kanu Sanyal was found hanging in his house, at the same place that saw the break of the Spring Thunder in 1967. The end seemed almost poetic, but then you need a Neruda for to make poetry. All that the old warrior had was a few columns in newspapers, one of whom actually described it his death as the “death of a top Naxal leader”, as if he was still in the neo-Naxalite movement…

In the end, all he had become was a blurry myth and a sad present, repudiated by those who carry his legacy and casually ignored by those who once feared him…the fate of all great men who did not die in the blaze of glory and whom history passed by in search of fresher and more photogenic heroes…

His death came a few days before the Naxalites massacred 76 CRPF jawans in an ambush, the biggest attack by them to date. The government and the Naxals have declared open war, in which for now, the government seems to be on the backfoot.

So, at a time that the Naxalites have become, officially, the biggest threat that this country has ever faced (J&K terrorism pales by comparison), with them having a presence in a quarter of the country, with their tentacles reaching out into urban centres as well, you would expect the symbol of the Naxalite movement to be satisfied. At least, the last thing you would expect him to do is to go hang himself…

But then you got to ask yourself – was he a Naxalite anymore? Maybe in his last moments he would have muttered to himself paraphrasing Marx who once famously said “If that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist”…maybe he was aware that no matter what he did, the media and the society would fail to spot the difference between what he believed in and what the Naxalites today believe in.

The Naxalism that arose from the simple need to fight for dignity slowly became a movement in which violence, not justice (which is an abstract term anyway) became the priority for maintaining momentum. It became a movement in which poor must remain poor in order for having a raison d'etre for the movement.

If an insurrection goes on for too long, it begins to look like what it intends to supplant. Maybe that's what Kanu Sanyal saw and realized.

When Naxals make pacts with dodgy politicians and when they start to blow up schools, when Naxals become the tipping factors in elections by way of fear, when they begin to claim glorious victory by killing CRPF men who have been pushed to be cannon fodder, maybe he realized that it was a war for its own means – a never ending war in which the people to be killed will be the ones whom he wanted to give a different life all those years ago…

Maybe the end came for him much before the noose tightened. Maybe at the end he had had enough of the power that flows out of the barrel of the gun…

Maybe its time to mourn him as we mourn those great visionaries who dreamt big and tried to live upto that dream, no matter how much the rug was pulled under them.

That takes courage…so does preparing a rope for yourself…

RIP Kanuda…

del.icio.us Tags: Kanu sanyal,naxals,naxalite,revolutionary,homage,tribute,india,communism,history,insurrection,suicide bomber,west bengal,media

Of Defiance and Death – Pinter’s Nobel speech..

G had recommended the Nobel acceptance lecture by Harold Pinter. I got around to reading it after a while…

And boy was it a read…there are some things you read once in a while that sends your blood coursing down your views and leaves you throbbing awake, with all all your senses pounding away…This article did the same for me, having read words of such power after a long time.

The words turn from being dreamy and philosophical at first to savage and bitterly laden with irony by the time it comes near the end. It does not end on a sweet or hopeful note, which is the best way it could have ended…and it has a poem by Pinter which I had not read before, termed “Death”…beautiful!!

The best antidote to banal and tabloid reporting that besieges us everyday…an article for keeps…

Read it here

Of course, an added reason I like this article is that one of the poems that has affected me profoundly is cited here - “I'm Explaining a Few Things” by Neruda…the power of the words in that poem seem tailor made for the article…

A hurray for Pinter…you are sorely missed…

del.icio.us Tags: Harold Pinter,nobel,nobel speech,article,anti-war,protests,Neruda

LTTE and the internet illiteracy

We are seeing the end of LTTE, one of the most notorious and well known militant organization in the world. And it is something that needs to be welcomed. LTTE had become the very problem that they had started out to solve in 1983 – securing a peaceful future for the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka.

Like most guerrilla movements with a cause, LTTE had started off fighting a real oppression and found wide ranging support among the Tamil population, which is why its supporter base grew by leaps and bounds. But as with many revolutions that meanders for too long, LTTE became an organization that sought power as its means and ends. The ideal for the movement would have been to join the political process once they were in a position of strength and had successfully championed the cause of Tamil empowerment in the island.

Instead, even after repeated peace overtures, LTTE chose to keep fighting thus betraying to the world that it was hungry for power only and not for any kind of resolution. The result has been a thorough fascist organization under a megalomaniac leader.

LTTE also got corrupted in many other ways, almost right from the start – the practice of using child soldiers being the most heinous one, using civilians as pawns and human shields and torpedoing any development projects that came up in the ‘liberated’ zone, thus stymieing any hope of better conditions for the people under their control, the people they were ostensibly liberating.

However, if you read about the protests that are still taking place by the Tamil diaspora in the various cities around the world, to force the western governments to make the Sri Lankan government stop the military operation, you would wonder whether the much vaunted power of the internet to disseminate large amount of knowledge at the click of a button is really just a societal marketing phrase.

Because in these protests, we hear about the atrocities committed by the army only and not about the unnecessary casualties inflicted on the civilians by LTTE who are refusing to let the civilians escape and holding them by force. It would seem that the diaspora has shut its eyes and ears to any other information other than what chauvinistic Tamil websites are spewing which are still holding to the illusionary promise of a Tamil Eelam, their equivalent of land of milk and honey. The fact that LTTE has repeatedly violated human rights seems not to have made any dent in their opinions. The diaspora just wants to keep on believing that something that they have funded could not be committing atrocities against its own people.

It is also assumed that by the diaspora that they can speak for the Sri Lankan Tamils just because of a common ethnicity and in the process completely discounting the fact that what they believe and what actually happens on the ground are two very different things. There is a large trace of ethnic chauvinism in these protests. The question that they need to be asked is – what will happen if there is a ceasefire? There has not been a single instance that the Tigers have honoured a peace process. What will happen to the long suffering Tamil population in the island who have had to live in the crossfire for nearly three decades now? LTTE has been thoroughly discredited. Do they want the organization to keep scuttling the future of the Tamils in the region?

The problem is that solutions are absent but the anger is there and a completely irrational fundamentalist anger – truly the most fanatic fundamentalist is also the most ignorant one. Especially one whose whole contribution to the situation has been money sent to LTTE for the ‘Tamil cause’.

It just goes to prove a maxim that Julius Caesar reportedly spoke almost two millennia ago - “Men believe what they want to believe”..and no amount of information right under their noses can make a difference.

Technorati Tags: LTTE,Sri Lanka,War,Tamil,Diaspora,protests,internet,knowledge

END OF POST