Long Live Counter-Revolution: Bourgeois Rewriting of Naxalbari and the Return of the ‘Impure’
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
1 Long Live Counter-revolution: Bourgeois Rewriting of Naxalbari and the Return of the ‘Impure’ Samrat Sengupta, Doctoral Scholar, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta and Assistant Professor, Department of English, Kharagpur College Suddhabrata Deb, in an essay, makes a detailed critic of novels by mainstream Bangla riters like Sunil Gangopadhyay, Samaresh Basu, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Gourkishor Ghosh, Samaresh Majumder et al. He quotes another important critic of Bangla literature Asrukumar Sikdar ho comments on Samaresh Basu ( hich ho ever might be applicable to other above mentioned riters as ell): *The ay Samaresh makes his repetitive negative critic of Communist activism and Party in his novels that his novels have become propagandist., 1 Deb continues to critici.e the ay these authors often feign objectivity though actually they are critical of Na0albari movement. They claim to represent hat has actually taken place. Samaresh Majumder is taken up as an e0ample of ho the novelist tells his story ith the objectivity of a reporter and finally the protagonist of the novel reali.es that he as directionless.1 The t o chief receptions, and thereby representations, of Na0albari movements are as follo s 2 firstly, a certain sympathy for the revolution hinting upon its inevitability because of the failure of Indian democracy and secondly, to think it as an aberration of 4normal5 life destined to failure. The novels hich I mentioned above constitute mainly those supporting the later vie hereas its5 critics constitute those supporting the former. Ho ever it is necessary to interrogate the process of the production of this 4normal5 and ho it is comple0ly Discourses on Naxalbari edited by Pradip Basu, (Kolkata: Setu, 2010), 47-62 2 connected ith that aberration 6 that violent rupture of 4order5. The centre2stage of this revolution as occupied by a group of urban middle2class youth ho attempted to collaborate ith the peasants to mobili.e a radical mass uprising motivated by the teachings of Mao and the Chinese revolution. So it is necessary to have an apt understanding of the middle2class intelligentsia. Ranajit Guha, in an interesting essay called *Torture and Culture,, discusses torture of rebels in police custody as an alternative to the contemporary culture hich is both implicit in it and appropriated by it. This culture is principled by hat Guha calls *comprador liberalism,8 6 *normal institutional means of mind2bending schools, universities, ashrams, mass media, etc.,4. The Indian civil society churned out of this liberal forms of education is supposedly more imperialist than liberal and they are made to appropriate the system of pedagogy and disciplining hich helps in the continuation of domination and gives a temporary, circumscribed and selfish sense of autonomy and security received as 4normal5. This nature of Indian bourgeois ho appropriates feudal modes of thinking has perhaps a deep2seated economic reason hich Sumit Sarkar discusses in an essay hile analysing the role of an intellectual in the conte0t of so called Bengal Renaissance hich is often claimed to have taken place in the nineteenth century. He rites: More fundamentally, therefore, the limitations of, our intellectuals, 4radical5 and 4conservatives5 alike, ere connected ith the socio2 economic structure moulded by colonialism. In Bengal, this meant firstly the progressive tightening of British control over industry and commerce:The bourgeois values imbibed by the intelligentsia through their Western education and contacts thus remained bereft of material content or links ith production.,5 So in the intellectual culture of India after coloni.ation idea/ideal becomes materially bereft. Rather the material operates on a separate realm devoid of any ideal, inclined to ards a selfish circumscribed end of undisturbed, conformist, Discourses on Naxalbari edited by Pradip Basu, (Kolkata: Setu, 2010), 47-62 3 middle class life helpful for the maintenance of once imperialist and then pseudo2 nationalist, self2coloni.ing statuesque. The revolt of the Na0alites as not simply against a political system going astray, a failed democracy to be altered by the forces of communism, but against this renaissance burden of ideals bereft of materiality 6 the imperialist hog ash. The immediate e0pression of this as, as Ranajit Guha has discussed, the attacks upon the education system and institutions hich is used to maintain the statuesque. The attack as also on the great father figures of Bengal renaissance like Rammohan Ray and Vidyasagar hose idols ere violently hurled do n. This move against the imperialist2nationalist episteme ho ever is like an Oedipal desire to murder the father. No is it possible that as has been proposed by Freudian Oedipus Comple0, the son ho ants to kill the father also ants to be the father or unconsciously ants to adopt the father2 positionA Is it possible to be epistemically freeA There is an inturruptive relationship bet een the na0alite present and so2called Renaissance past hich can be illustrated through Saibal Mitra5s novel Agnir Upakhyan (The Tale of Agni)6 here the protagonist Agni narrates his o n tale of becoming a Na0alite. His narrative moves bet een his immediate past and his origin. He dra s a genealogy of himself, his great grandfather being a thangare – one of the Bengal5s o n high aymen ho suddenly becomes a ealthy lando ner. The story of his predecessors constantly interrupts his narrative, these interruptions being deeply suggestive. Agni ironically remarks that his great grandfather Buno Roy (the Bangla ord Buno means uncivili.ed) as a contemporary of Vidyasagar. Perhaps the same system hich produced Buno Roy produced Vidyasagar. Agni5s narrative demonstrates tremendous selfishness, material greed and lecherous livelihood of his predecessors ho ere the outcome of Permanent Settlement and British imperialist policies hich made so2called Bengal Renaissance possible. But that is a different story and there might be separate discussions on the relationship bet een Na0alite movement and Bengal Renaissance. My point of inquiry is that if according to Ranajit Guha the Na0alite violence is a violence against a certain kind Discourses on Naxalbari edited by Pradip Basu, (Kolkata: Setu, 2010), 47-62 4 of hierarchy, against elements of feudalism that haunts our liberalism, against culture that is only an alternate to torture, against idealism that is complacent, against materialism hich is governed by greed and self2seeking ends, then is it possible to be completely free of that burden of epistemeA Why Agni ants a revolverA If he kills the killer he himself might also become the killer 6 he cannot but kill his o n self. Killing the father is killing the son. Without predecessors ho can Agni be thereB In a culture here torture has an indispensable visible/invisible omnipresence violence becomes a possibility both on the part of the oppressive/repressive state 6 the system, as ell as on the part of the victimi.ed subject. If torture is the other face of liberalism, violence is the other face of revolutionary benevolence. Therefore it is observed that the revolutionaries often ignore the originary, founding violence hidden behind the la hich Cacques Derrida discusses in his essay *Force of Da : The *Mystical Foundation of Authority,,: *It is quasi2logic of the ghost hich, because it is the more forceful one, should be substituted for an ontological logic of presence, absence or representation,E. This violence implicit in the force of la according to Derrida is mystical as it cannot be justified ith the use of reason. The capacity to use la is because of the authority hich enables it and force hich implies violence. The logic of this force can be ell demonstrated by the quote from Da Fontaine used by Derrida in the preface of his book Rogues: Two Essays on Reason: The Strong are al ays best at proving they5re right. Witness the case e5re no going to cite.8 This sho s ho the very act of strength precedes justice and righteousness even before the case begins. Derrida hile discussing Walter Benjamin5s *Critique of Violence, demonstrates ho such originary violence or the possibility of such originary violence lies dormant in Benjamin5s preference of 4divine violence5 hich manifests itself in revolution and is just natural (i.e. just because it is natural like an Discourses on Naxalbari edited by Pradip Basu, (Kolkata: Setu, 2010), 47-62 5 earthquake for e0ample and also natural because it is just) over the 4mythical violence5 i.e. the violence of la . Derrida comments: All revolutionary situations, all revolutionary discourses, on the left or on the right:justify the recourse to violence by alleging the founding, in progress or to come, of a ne la , or a ne state. As this la to come ill in return legitimate, retrospectively, the violence that may offend the sense of justice, its future anterior already justifies it. The foundation of all states occurs in a situation that one can thus call revolutionary. It inaugurates a ne la G it al ays does so in violence.9 There is then a founding violence behind the precipitation of revolution. The roots of such violence are to be discovered in the ideology of the Bengali middle2class 6 educated and idealist, ideal being the other of material. They form hat Talcott Parsons ould call a 4societal community5 6 separate from state and economy ho Parsons thinks can act independently and autonomously to affect and transform the state to ards the protection of rights and freedom and protection from e0ploitation and injustice. They, according to Parsons, can ensure equality and also simultaneously protect the liberty of people. Societal community through association can make this possible. So Parsons5 ideals become the champion of the highest reali.ation of the democratic principles of liberty and equality through the third principle of fraternity in the guise of association.