Colorado Department of Education, Educator Effectiveness Winter 2014
In Struggle Education of the Educator
Transcript of In Struggle Education of the Educator
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DISCUSSION
DECember 28, 2013 vol xlvIiI no 52 EPW Economic & PoliticalWeekly134
In Struggle, Education of theEducator
Bernard DMello
Welcoming C P Bhambris call
to debate (10 August 2013) the
propositions in the article The
Near and the Far: Why Is Indias
Liberal-Political Democracy
Rotten? (1 June 2013), the
author of this article argues
that expecting a peaceful massmovement aimed at carrying
out a revolution is only
daydreaming. A mass movement
that has revolution as its ultimate
goal will, almost inevitably,
necessarily assume a violent form
in the face of state repression.
But cruelty and brutality must
never be a part of the means ofrevolution. We educators need
to be educated, and our best
education can take place only in
struggle, for correct knowledge is
also a struggle, and can be a deep
one at that.
The process of democratisation is
based upon radical criticism of
existing society; criticism is its in-
dispensible element. Its activists should
therefore never avoid criticism or forbid
controversies. All shades of opinion within
this movement towards democracy should
make themselves fully felt. I therefore
welcome C P Bhambris (henceforth,
CPB) call that the debate should contin-
ue. In response to my essay, The Near
and the Far: Why Is Indias Liberal-
Political Democracy Rotten? (1 June
2013), CPBasserts that the Indian van-
guard parties, hopelessly divided at
present, need to form a united front of
the oppressed (United Front of the
Oppressed, 10 August 2013, pp 132-33)
to advance the process of democratisa-
tion (in his words, revolution).
Misrepresentations
He claims that DMello blames (my em-
phasis) the rulers for following the policy
of social divide to rule, while the issue
is that fragmented communists cannot
organise a revolution of any kind (p 133).
I would be the last activist to blame
the ruling classes for this or any other
policy. For me, it is useless to expect
the ruling classes to act against their
own interests. If I or any other Marxist
were to blamethe ruling classes for the
divide to rule policy, this would sug-
gest that we are under the illusion that
the rulers had an obligationnot to abuse
their position in dividing to rule over the
oppressed. It would then seem that I am
generally against the violation of the
obligations that the ruling classes have
presumably undertaken (not to do this or
that) and not against the social system as
such. What a misrepresentation of my
political position! Further, CPBsays thatI have a misplaced characterisation of
the Indian class-state essentially as
caste-ridden Brahmanical-Hindu com-
munal (p 133). I have very clearly stat-
ed that the Indian state is essentially a
caste-ridden, brahmanical-Hindu com-
munal, underdeveloped capitalist one
(p 44). Underdeveloped capitalistis at thecore of my characterisation of the Indian
state. But CPB is obsessed with Indian
social structure, whatever that means,
for different Indian sociologists seem to
attach different conceptual meanings to
social structure, and he then goes on
to claim that I do not relate this social
structure with the history of India nor
do I focus attention on its impact on the
struggles of the working classes (CPB:
133). Actually I do not use the ambigu-
ous term, social structure, but I do, in
some detail in the one-hour lecture
whose text is my essay under discussion,
provide a historical perspective on com-
munalism and caste, as regards the lat-
ter, drawing on the work of eminent
sociologists like Ramkrishna Mukherjee
and I P Desai.
Armed Political Struggles
I, for one, am a perpetual student, ever
trying to tap the existing pool of knowl-edge, not only in the classroom and the
library, but also in the field. For instance,
after many years of study and visits to
areas where Indias Maoist/Naxalite
movement is active, my first such visit in
the mid-1980sto Jehanabad (then a sub-
division of Gaya) and Gaya in Bihar, I
have found that Maoism is a carefully
thought-out system of ideas and practice
(DMello 2010: 21-54). Indeed, Maoism
defends the oppressed, and so I do not
think I can dismiss it so lightly the way
CPBdoes. I think one must acquaint one-
self thoroughly with it before one finds
reasons to dismiss it. Of course, we must
write without fear, favour, prejudice or
malice, as some of my best teachers used
to remind me. But CPBarrogantly declares:
Armed political struggle in India, whether
led by the Maoists or by other organisations
in the border states in the North-East or J&K,
have not at all(my emphasis) succeeded in
creating a social awakening (p 132).
Really? Leave aside the Maoists for a
moment, pray how then did the Naga
Bernard DMello([email protected])is amember of the Committee for the Protection of
Democratic Rights, Mumbai.
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DISCUSSION
Economic & PoliticalWeekly EPW DECember 28, 2013 vol xlvIiI no 52 135
rebels manage to overwhelmingly win
the 1951 referendum (plebiscite) among
the Naga tribes for a sovereign Naga-
land and, later on, maintain a liberated
zone for years, this in spite of the fact that
the main component of the Indian states
strategy was to militarily crush them?
Need of Real Understanding
After many years of study and observa-
tion in the field, I am presently trying to
understand Maoism in neo-liberal India.
I believe no investigation, no right to
speak is, in certain contexts, an appro-
priate ground rule for democratic func-
tioning. And, of course, one needs to
have empathy in order to be objective;
the supercilious gaze will not lead to any
real understanding.
My observations over time seem to
suggest to me that the strategy and tac-
tics of the Indian Maoists have been/are
being continually tested in practice, and
on this basis, improved upon in the light
of experience. But CPB seems to have
concluded that the Indian Maoists are
tragic failures. I would not even say this
of the Diggers and Gerard Winstanley,
although they faltered in their methods
because of a lack of relevant experience,
which the Maoists too did when theystarted off.
I would be dishonest if I were to over-
look the extremely important contribu-
tions of Indias Marxist-Leninists (MLs)
and Maoists. In my essay on Indias rot-
ten liberal-political democracy, I high-
light, more generally, the positive social
outcomes of the violence of the oppres-
sed (pp 41-42), including the subsequent
land reforms in the aftermath of the
Telangana and Tebhaga movements of
the 1940sthat, CPBclaims, I completely
ignored. In the course of my studies of
the contemporary MLand Maoist move-
ments, I have found that Maoist and ML
practice has enriched the socialist herit-
age of the oppressed. The Indian MLs
and Maoists have spread the ideas and
practice of Maoism from its birthplace in
Hunan in 1927 to various places in India.
I find that the Maoist leaders are prod-
ucts of the people, and my observations
and studies seem to suggest to me thatcorrect revolutionary theory will emerge
in the process and in close connection
with practical political activity, especial-
ly when this is of a mass and revolution-
ary character.
Outside Acceptable Politics
The Maoists have been recognising that
the most difficult problem of a revolu-
tionary movement is how to reconcilethe needs of the oppressed for immedi-
ate improvements with the necessity
of overthrowing the whole system in
order to do away with the oppression of
the oppressed. Reconciling reform with
revolution is not an easy task that we
can glibly talk about. Here is a whole set
of aspirations, the revolutionary compo-
nent, that falls outside the narrow limits
of what may be called acceptable poli-
tics. If you are wedded to those aspira-
tions then you cannot hope to be safe,
for as Che Guevara said in his farewell
letter to Fidel Castro, one lives or dies in
a revolution (if it is a real one). And,
Che, I think, was certain that the strug-
gle was worth his life. He, and Azad and
Kishenji, the more recently martyred
revolutionaries, engaged in a political
and ethical project, for which they
fought and died. If I were to paraphrase
the 19th century Cuban poet Jose Marti,
then I would say that they were humanbeings who felt a sting when another
human being ... [was] slapped in the
face. The Indian people need dignity
even more than they need roti.
CPB, after running down Indias Maoists,
preaches that revolutions do not succeed
without mass mobilisation of the con-
scious underclasses. Did he even bother
to read Arundhati Roys celebrated essay,
Walking with the Comrades? Imagine
trying to pontificate to a Maoist about the
importance of mass consciousness! Has
CPBempathised with anything he has read
from the writings of Mao, the emphasis
the latter gives to what happens when
people become conscious of the direc-
tion of history, the liberation of their
energies as a result, and the fact that these
energies can be enormously powerful?
Indian Vanguard Parties
CPBexpresses the need for the Indian
vanguard parties to form a unitedfront of the oppressed. I am sure that all
those of us who wish for the liberation of
the oppressed would second that. But,
when one examines the possibility, his-
tory does matter. Apart from the institu-
tion of caste, and of course, the divisive
cards of religion, ethnicity and nation-
ality played by the ruling class parties,
all of which are (have been) antithetical
to any meaningful unity of the explo-ited and the oppressed, the historical
trajectory of communist politics must
be reckoned with too. We do not have
the space over here to throw light on
the latter, but the word revolution,
which CPB uses, and which is used so
often by parties calling themselves
communist, has been much, much less
acted upon.
In the latter half of the 1940s, in the
Communist Party of India (CPI), apart
from the P C Joshi line (which was to
metamorphose into the Ajoy Ghosh
line and then into the S A Dange line),
there was the B T Ranadive line; and,
importantly, the Andhra Secretariats
line, advocating the road of Maoist pro-
tracted peoples war, which was first
sought to be practised in the then unfold-
ing Telangana armed struggle. Through
what internal-democratic process did
the rightist faction gain the upper
hand and the CPIspolicy drift towardsparliamentarianism? (Frankly, following
the 1921 banning of factions within the
(All-) Russian Communist Party, com-
munist parties, generally, have, by and
large, gravely erred in their handling of
factions.) Again, when the formal party
split came in 1964, though the goal of
the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
CPI(M) was peoples democracy based
on an alliance of anti-feudal and anti-
imperialist forces, headed by the party,
and the CPIwanted to carry out a national
democratic revolution, the tactical lines
of the two parties were almost similar.
In practice, both the parties committed
themselves to the path of parliamentari-
anism. So now, if CPBsunited front of
the oppressed is to come into being, the
CPIand the CPI(M)will have to shift the
centre of gravity of their politics away
from parliamentarianism.
Regarding the All-India Coordination
Committee of Communist Revolution-aries (AICCCR) and the original Commu-
nist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
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DECember 28, 2013 vol xlvIiI no 52 EPW Economic & PoliticalWeekly136
(CPI-ML), I wish Charu Mazumdar (CM)
and his close comrades, on the one
side, and their opponents within and
without theAICCCRand the CPI-ML, on
the opposite side, had taken Lenins
1920 pamphlet Leftwing Communism:
An Infantile Disorder and Maos 1957
speech On the Correct Handling ofContradictions Among the People to
heart and mind. How could CMand his
followers, on the one side, and even
some of the veterans of the Telangana
armed struggle, on the opposite side,
have dealt with each other the way they
did? But of course, there has been a lot
of learning-by-doing over the years, es-
pecially in the CPI-ML (Peoples War),
which, later on, took the CPI(ML) (Party
Unity) into its fold, and then merged
with the Maoist Communist Centre of
India to form the CPI(Maoist). Never-
theless, there is an urgent need for the
CPI(Maoist) to undertake a dispassion-
ate review of its achievements and fail-
ures, strengths and limitations, and on
that basis, adapt and modify its strategy
and tactics in the light of the vastly
changed balance of class forces, nation-
ally and internationally.
Naivety in the Extreme
Today, as far as the ML parties go, the
two that matter the most in India are
the CPI(ML) (Liberation) and the CPI(ML)
(New Democracy). But as far as the pros-pects of their coming together, and that
too, alongside the CPI (Maoist), and
then, with the CPIand the CPI(M), all of
them in a united front of the op-
pressed, the tactical lines of all these
parties are so far apart that the possibility
is dim. And, of course, if CPBis expect-
ing a peaceful mass movement aimed at
carrying out a revolution, then he
must surely be daydreaming. A mass
movement that has revolution as its ulti-
mate goal will, almost inevitably, neces-
sarily assume a violent form in the face
of state repression. Here, CPBseems to
assume that the ruling classes and their
political representatives directing the
repressive apparatus of the state will
give a revolutionary party the opportu-
nity to organise! Naivety in the extreme!
However, cruelty and brutality must
never be allowed to get to be a part of
the violence of the oppressed in the
course of the revolution.
I am convinced that we educators
need to be educated, and the best educa-
tion of the educator can take place only
in struggle, for correct knowledge is alsoa struggle, and can be a deep one at that.
And, do not be so sure that the truth
unites; it divides too. Talking about a
revolution is one thing. But how do we
measure up as revolutionary intellectu-
als, those who contribute in one way or
another, to the overthrow of capitalist
society and the state institutions which
it has brought into being, as Engels put
it about Marx in his speech at Marxs
graveside on 17 March 1883? This is what
struck me on a rainy afternoon in July
2011 when I visited Marxs grave in the
Highgate Cemetery in north London
along with my friend Alpa Shah.
Reference
DMello, Bernard (2010): What Is Maoism? in(ed.), WhatIs Maoism and Other Essays by
DMello (Kharagpur: Cornerstone Publications).
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