Arun Shourie
Namboodiripas' fusillade was just the opening salvo, it turned out. The Communist Party of India published a series of pamphlets - Arun Shourie's Slanders Rebutted History has indicated the Communists, 1942 August Struggle and the Communist Party of India... Translated into several languages, these were distributed far and wide. Today, they are prophylactics -- anyone who reads them will be immunised against the abuse of these 'leading intellectuals' and their parties!
"This is not the first time that the Quit India movement has been forked out to slander and attack the communist movement in our country," began the Foreword by the General Secretary of the CPI, C Rajeshwara Rao.
"Whenever the ruling circles and reactionary vested interests are in a tight corner or the communist movement is making headway, they would dig up old fables to whip up anti-Communist prejudices. The pet theme is the so-called 'betrayal' of the freedom struggle in 1942 by the united Communist Party of India. Such things have happened a number of times in the past, even as late as 1975, during the days of Emergency imposed by Mrs Indira Gandhi' -- that last bit was truly audacious! For it was the General Secretary's very own Communist Party which had supported Mrs Gandhi's Emergency!
"Now the extreme reaction is worried because of the forging of left unity through the united struggles of the toiling people and also its gathering round of democratic allies," the General Secretary pronounced. "Hence this resurrection of the ghost of 1942 once again by Mr Arun Shourie in order to isolate the communist movement by fanning anti-communism."
"One would have ignored these attacks since we know very well that this is not the first time that such attacks have been leveled against us," the publication declared. "Arun Shourie, howsoever his journalistic talent may be, stands no comparison to such eminent personalities who have attacked us in the past. The eminent barrister, Langford James, of Meerut Conspiracy Case called us anti-God, anti-family, anti-decent everything with no sense of humour. History vindicated us. The Communist Party of India grew from strength to strength since those days of 1929. Today the Communist Movement is a strength to reckon with."
What all this had to do with the facts which I had set out, what I had to do with that barrister of 1929 was and remains a mystery. But 'devastating refutation' it was! And remember the line, 'One would have ignored these attacks...' -- it too is a standard one. The facts which have been brought to light, even more so those who have brought the facts to light are always beneath their dignity to answer. In his article 'refuting' what I had written, Panikkar had been the embodiment of lofty self- abnegation: "The alternative of suing for defamation the likes of Shourie is below one's dignity.... "
Now that a heap of new facts have been revealed, he is loftier still -- Shourie is not a historian, he is a mythologist... a political pornographer... I shall not dignify him by answering his diatribe...
Apart from everything else, one reason it is a waste of one's time to do so is that the dunce is not going to be able to comprehend the reality in any case. "It will be a waste of effort and also good space to refute this nonsense which betrays Shourie's utter Ignorance of history and world events," the Communist Party publication continued.
"We do not want to go into his vapid nonsensical utterances in the last installment," wrote the Communist Party publication. "They are tarred with the same rotten anti-Communist stuff with the hackneyed claim that communists are but the agents of Moscow (or rather of the Soviet Union) and as such they have to be treated with contempt. (On the contrary, my argument had been that precisely for this reason they ought to be treated with wariness, that their potential for harming the country, for poisoning discourse must not be ignored!)
"Even a cursory reading of the names of the Communist Party members who have found their way from other streams Of the national movement, either of the national revolutionary or of the orthodox Gandhian type (And what about those who saw through the Communist Party, including several of the topmost functionaries of the Party, and left it?) and the whole host of intellectuals who have adored (sic) the ranks of the Communist Party, and the large mass of workers and peasants who have acquired a new stature in their life by joining and working for the Communist Party would belie Arun Shourie's vile slanders."
Suppose for a moment that all the intellectuals of India had fallen to 'adoring' the ranks of the Communist Party, that every worker and peasant had become a devotee of the Party, how would that alter the assistance the Party had rendered to the British?
The 'this-is-an-old-charge' defence again: "These slanders themselves are not of Arun Shourie's original imagination either; they are products of a diseased and jaundiced view of the state of affairs which cannot bear the thought of the ordinary worker and peasant, of the ordinary man taking part and having a say in the political life of the country..."
Mockery, derision, scorn, the charge of conspiracy, of secret funds being pumped in by un-named forces, the charge that the critic is privilege-personified and therefore cannot stand the fact that, because of the struggles put up by the Left, the masses are coming into their own - an avalanche to scare everyone from doing what this fellow has done. "The argument would be similar to say, 'When did you last stop beating your wife?'," the Party publication declared. "This pearl of wisdom which Shourie seems to be bestowing cannot just be called a fool's paradise in which he may be lurking. It is a dangerous game to sow dissensions In the minds of the young political workers. And there are many other interests in the country who are financing it as is evident from various translations and other media coverage that have gone with it."
But hope also, confidence too -- lest the rank and file lose heart: "But truth is truth and must stand out, even when Shourie indulges in making a lot of 'shor' (noise), but with a purpose no doubt."
The great names who saw the light and acknowledged that the Communists are the ones who had been right... : "They all did this out of a process of understanding of national events in the context of international developments which is beyond the mental horizon of Arun Shourie or similar other anti-Communist scribes who have slandered us in the past..." Two key points in that - the ones who criticise them are deficient in understanding, and they are congenitally anti-Communist.
That last bit - about being congenitally anti-Communist -- is doubly believed: On metaphysical grounds, as well as practical ones. Once you believe in a religion which maintains that the Revelation has been handed to it alone, it necessarily follows that, if a person does not see the truth of that religion, there is something congenitally wrong with him! In totalitarian societies -- Stalin's Soviet Union which our Communists so adored -- there is a practical reason too: For anyone to stand against the received Line in such a set up, he must necessarily be congenitally mad!
"It is difficult for Arun Shourie to realise this, devoid as he is of any political perspective" -- the person in question can be said to have 'political perspective' only when and if he reaches the same conclusions as The Theory dictates!
As the man lacks elementary political understanding, it is always pointless to check up the facts which such a person has adduced: I had published extensive extracts from a 120-page report which the Communist Party had submitted to the British narrating the assistance its members were rendering by sabotaging the Quit India Movement. "The so-called 120-page document," the publication scoffed, "unfortunately I thought it a waste of time to count whether it was actually 120 pages as Shourie seems to have done. " Exactly what these historians maintained when I nailed the concoction they had put out: Of 'rational' having been surreptitiously changed to 'national' in the ICHR Resolution, of three of the five objectives having been deleted from the Resolution.
Hence, the confidence in the future: "We are aware that the four articles by Arun Shourie both in English and other languages are designed particularly to create a rift between the left and the other democratic forces. We have every confidence that this will fail and our healthy national movement will work steadily towards the goal of bringing about the social transformation through the path of peace, consolidation of national freedom, and socialism."
"Shourie's series", began another publication which the Communist Party put out, "is a long chain of distortions, canards and slander against the Communist Party of India, the international communist movement and the Soviet Union..." "From 1944 onward (and even earlier) paid pen-pushers and agents of imperialism and the bourgeoisie have repeatedly run slander campaigns against the CPI and the USSR..." Hansraj Vohra... Langford James, the barrister again..., "the notorious Minoo Masani and later on his worthy 'disciple' Sitaram Goel"... "Naturally enough questions are being asked by people all over India: Why has Shourie started this foul campaign now?... " That is always a useful question to ask: When you can't answer a person on facts, ask: "But why now?" India carries out its first nuclear explosion on 18 May 1974 at Pokhran. And what does the redoubtable representative of the Communists ask in the Lok Sabha? "We have been told that we have (had) the capability for a long time, we could have set off this blast much earlier, if we wanted to. Well, if we could have set it off much earlier, we could have set it off much later also. My question is about the timing of it. There must be some reason behind the timing of this, this particular timing of 18th May. I am not clear about it."
Next, redouble authority by quoting each other! That is twice- blessed: It doubles the weight of your assertion, and, as the comrade is being cited as an authority, it doubles his weight for the future! And so the CPI publication fortified the question it had posed - the hardy perennial, 'But why now?'- by citing what E M S Namboodiripad had asked!
"Reputed Communist leader and General Secretary of the CPI(M) E M S Namboodiripad," it said, "has queried: 'Why should Arun Shourie have taken up the shop-soiled wares of Communist Betrayal in 1942, 40 years after the Quit India struggle started?' "
And the answer too was fortified by citing E M S once again: "The seasoned anti-Communist Minoo Masani promptly jumped into the fray, in defence of Shourie... E M S sharply retorts: 'What Mr Shourie himself and Mr Masani are afraid of is thus the coming together of opposition parties not opposed to the Communists, but cooperating with them. This is exactly what I suspected in my Bombay press conference.'..." "Thus the cat is out of the bag," the publication proclaimed in triumph taking E M S' assertion as proof.
"Large segments of the non-Communist non-left opposition parties have repeatedly joined hands with the Communist-led left opposition, both against the authoritarian forces led by Indira Congress as well as against right-wing communal and divisive forces like the BJP and others. This has alarmed both Indira Gandhi and her entourage, as well as the BJP, RSS and their allies. Shourie and Masani have come out as their spokesmen and in their desperate efforts to drive a wedge between the Communists and the non-Communist opposition parties. In this foul effort, what better weapon can they take up than the shop- soiled ware of anti-Communist, anti-Soviet canard?"
Thus, congenitally anti-Communist, vile motives, desperation of the critic - all there!
Next, a repeat of denunciation-by-association: "let us now have a brief look at the 'noble' anti-Communist predecessors of Arun Shourie!," the publication proceeds. Hansraj Vohra... Minoo Masani... And now comes Arun Shourie who is supposed to be a talented journalist but who has been exposed as a communalist... And who has published his articles? The Illustrated Weekly of India which has also published an article (among the hundreds it would have published in the period!) 'The RSS will stay' by an RSS member. And so the truth manifest: "The communists must go and the RSS must stay - the 'Weekly-Shourie-Masani tie-up is now crystal clear! This is the basic reason why Shourie has picked up from the dustbin of history the discarded weapon of anti-communism!"
Forty pages of such sterling refutations in one publication, twenty-three pages in another. All leading to the conclusion at once triumphal and defiant, and comic: "The CPI is a party of heroes and martyrs of freedom struggle as well as of class battles. The Shouries and Masanis can wear the shop-soiled dirty shirt of anti-communism as long as they like, but their place is in the dung-heap of history! The combined imperialist armies tried to destroy the young Soviet State. They failed. Hitler tried it too and was destroyed in turn.
"Today the Reagans and Thatchers are again trying to play the same dirty game. They too will meet the fate of Hitler and Mussolini! So also will their paid henchmen, who spatter mud at the communists! Like old man Galileo facing the inquisition and like our own Dimitrov, facing the butcher Goering, we Indian communists also hurl defiance at the face of all our reactionary detractors and persecutors and with rock-like conviction, resolutely declare: Nonetheless, the Earth goes forward, and all roads lead to Communism!"
Amen!
Twin lessons in that. To roll back their untruth, we must immunise ourselves against their verbal terrorism. And among the easy prophylactics is to cut out and store their vituperation -- in less than no time it mutates into the ridiculous.
The press conferences and pamphlets were hurled at me in 1984. In 1986 in his A History of Indian Freedom Struggle, E M S Namboodiripad acknowledged that communists had collaborated with the British -- or rather, that they "did not hesitate to establish contact with the government and accept the assistance...."! -- during the 'Quit India' Movement.
In 1984, as we have just seen, the Communists were proclaiming, "Nonetheless, the Earth goes forward, and all roads lead to Communism." In 1989 the Berlin Wall was pulled down...
The Observer
January 22, 1999
Showing posts with label quit india. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quit india. Show all posts
Sunday, May 25, 2008
After Selling Himself in the Flesh Market
Arun Shourie
Arun Shourie is not a historian. He is a mythologist of Hindu communalism. He is a political pornographer," declared one of these eminent historians, K N Panikkar, in Kerala the other day. He had been asked for an answer to the facts I had set out in Eminent Historians. And he was giving reasons why it was beneath his dignity to give one.
He had been a little less lofty just a few weeks ago! And had deigned to write an entire article trying to explain the facts I had set out about the goings on in the Indian Council of Historical Research. "This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then," he had written in The Asian Age. I had shown that the story they had planted -- about 'rational' having been made into 'national,' had been a complete forgery.
I had also drawn attention to the way large sums had been consumed in projects of the ICHR - such as the Towards Freedom Project - and how little had come of them. He wrote that The Times of India too had put out a front-page story about the Towards Freedom Project the previous year. And the historians had clarified the facts through a public statement... They had not received a penny. They had worked in a purely honorary capacity...
We have seen more of the facts since. But what he said - "This is an old charge..."- is something to bear in mind -- there is never a right time to ask a question about them. If events are still fresh, their response always is: "But where are the facts?" If you happen to have enumerated and substantiated the twenty facts about which evidence is in, their response is: "But he has not taken into account item 21; this selective focus on just a handful of facts shows that he is working to a purpose." When sufficient time has elapsed, and you have garnered and presented evidence about all the facts, their response is: "but this is an old charge. That he is raking it up now shows how the forces of reaction are panic-stricken at the growing consolidation of forces of secularism and democracy."
And each time they set forth a spate of angry words! "If he believes, as he apparently does, that the fame of historians like S Gopal, R S Sharma, Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib who are held in high academic esteem, both nationally and internationally, are (sic) based on cheap manipulation," wrote Panikkar, "there must be something congenitally wrong with his mind. Otherwise it is possible that he is reflecting his own personal experience as to how a 'fellow' like him who writes communal mythology has come to be regarded a distinguished journalist."
"Finally, about hymen and virginity about which Shourie, as a good Hindu, is rightly concerned," Panikkar continued. "In the public eye his hymen has not remained intact, not because where he writes or to whom he gives interviews and articles, only because what he writes. Needless to say that the RSS publications carry his interview and articles only because they are rabidly communal. He cannot hope to remain a virgin after selling himself in the flesh market. Being a BJP member of Parliament and an ideologue of Hindu communalism, Shourie should get his hymen tested, if he is still under misconception about his virginity."
That is scholarly response. Indeed, in their circles it passes for 'devastating refutation'! But one must go the extra mile: Proclaim your belief in double-standards -- yes, I do what he does, but I do so because I believe in The Cause!
"As for me, unlike him, I do not hunt with the hound and run with the hare," Panikkar continued, though it wasn't clear what the colloquism was in aid of. "I contribute signed articles to the publications of the Communist Party, because I believe in the ideals it stands for -- democracy, secularism and socialism. By doing so, if my hymen is broken, I do not lament it, as Shourie does."
All this as an answer to the facts about the working of the ICHR to which I had drawn attention!
Since, then, an additional mountain of facts has been published. About pilferage, about doctored textbooks, about the intellectual dishonesty in the way these eminents treat facts and sources. Their response now is twofold. First, an entire theory! "There is not such thing as 'objectivity' in history," Panikkar told the audience in Kerala. So, when you find them concocting 'facts', you cannot but applaud them: Having liberated themselves from bourgeois scruples, they are propagating what will serve The Great Cause! And the evidence you adduce which establishes that what they are saying is a concoction, that evidence is of no consequence -- because in any case in history there is no such thing as objectivity! they plotted the assassination of CP Ramaswamy Aiyer, the Diwan -- these provide ready examples. The craven accolades our Communists showered on the Emergency when it was in force, and how, the moment it had ended, they coloured themselves up as heroes who had fought it -- these will do as well.
"The criticism that Communists decide their policy not in the Interests of their own country but in the interests of the Soviet Union is neither new nor original," thundered the Communist Party of India at Gandhiji and the Congress when it was confronted with evidence of having betrayed the National Movement during the Quit India struggle, and teamed up with the British. "It has been an old, very old gibe of the reactionary parties and their scribes the world over. It was the main theme the British Prosecutor played up against us In the Meerut Conspiracy Case. If 17 years later you make the same suggestion against us, we cannot but ask you -- Is this worthy of you?" (Communist Reply to the Congress Working Party Charges, by the General Secretary of the Party, PC Joshi, Communist Party of India, Calcutta, 1946, abridged version, pp 3-4.)
And always there is perhaps, I should now say, "there used to be" the decisive proof: Of having been vindicated by History! "All our brother parties had to live down this slander through their work among their own people," the Communist Party continued. "And If in the world of today there is any single political force which is growing, it is the Communist movement. If any banner has lost ground in every country, it is the bankrupt banner of blind anti-communalism."
Towards the end of 1983, VM Tarkunde Invited me to deliver the MN Roy Memorial Lecture for 1984. The lecture was held in Bombay on the same day in 1984 as It is every year - the birth anniversary of M N Roy. I documented the treacherous role the Communists had played during the 1942 Movement. Pritish Nandy, then Editor of The Illustrated Weekly, carried the text in a series. The text contained secret Masons of the Communist functionaries with British rulers, the request they made and the concessions they were given, the accounts they submitted to Richard Maxwell, the Home Member, and Richard Tottenham, the Additional Secretary who the brutal suppression of that campaign, reports in which the Communist Party set out the good work its members had done to help the government...
E M S Namboodiripad rushed to Bombay. Shourie is speaking for the forces of reaction, he thundered at a specially-convened press conference. These forces have panicked at the growing unity of secular and democratic forces.... They are unnerved that they will get a sound drubbing at the elections which are round the corner....
No elections were round any corner. Tarkunde had given his invitation five months earlier. The Communists' role In the Quit India Movement had not been the topic I had thought of in the first instance. I had thought that I would speak on 'Ideology as Blinkers,' and that I would Illustrate my argument with four examples. by the time of the lecture only one example was ready - that relating to the Communists during the 1942 Movement. And that is how I got to speak on the topic when I did. Nonetheless, 'conspiracy, 'unnerved', "elections round the corner" it was!
That was in 1984. Soon, E M S took a giant step towards owning up to what could no longer be hidden! Of course, he did so in the way characteristic of those who have appropriated The Great Cause! Yes, we entered into a liaison with the British. But we did so to master the arts of war: The dumbos in the Congress could not grasp the international situation, we alone could -- for we had The Theory, and we saw that the principal task was to save the country from the Japanese, that for this what was needed was a mastery of the arts of war, and that the only way to gain access to these arts at the time was to establish a working relationship with the British!
The rationalisation is typical of his A History of Indian Freedom Struggle, the 900-page book he published in 1986, just two years after that fusillade about my lecture.
Congress policy was wrong and suicidal, Namboodiripad wrote. Gandhi had not thought the matter through, he wrote, and had left no instructions on how the struggle should be carried on in the event of the principal leaders being arrested. The Congress had not prepared for guerrilla war against the advancing Japanese, he wrote. It had devised no way to Provide medical assistance to victims of bombing, nor had it thought of mobilising the masses against hoarders and profiteers, he wrote. It was the Communist Party which took up these tasks, Namboodiripad wrote. "It did not hesitate to establish contact with the government and accept the assistance and for carrying out this programme."
Thus, it was just a 'contact'! That 'contact' was established to train the cadres for guerrilla war against the invading Japanese. And what the comrades did was not to assist the British, they only "did not hesitate... to accept the assistance" which the British proffered! And the poor Communists had to take on this repugnant task because the Congress and Gandhi had not thought the matter through!
In any case, there were disagreements within the Congress too, Namboodiripad wrote. In fact, having themselves carted off to prison enabled the Congress leaders to escape responsibility for what had to be done. At the back of the Congress leaders' decision to launch the Quit India Movement was the object of furthering their bourgeois class interests by eventually negotiating and compromising with the British rulers, Namboodiripad wrote. It is the Communist Party, and not the Congress which acted in accordance with the resolutions of the Congress, he claimed. Moreover, though the Communist Party opposed the Quit India struggle, it simultaneously organised campaigns against the general policies of the government, he claimed.
The familiar blend of indignation, apologia, explanation, evasion. By the end of Namboodiripad's account, this of half-truths, smears, pasting motives on others, non-sequiters, contradictions becomes laughable.
"This does not, however, mean that the Communist Party did not commit any error in translating its general approach towards the Quit India struggle into Practical activities," the General of the Party allowed. "Failing to properly appreciating (sic) the popular feeling behind the struggle, the Party had often displayed a tendency to denounce those participating in the struggle as fascist agents. It had also made certain errors in organising mass struggles during this period. All such errors were subjected later to severe self-criticism, particularly in the Second Party Congress held in Calcutta in 1948." That last bit has an immediate practical consequence: If before their self- criticism you criticised their doings, you were clearly a fascist agent; if you do so after that, you are even more conclusively a fascist agent -- the Party having already acknowledged its 'error', that you are still raking up the 'old canard' is proof positive that you are doing so at the behest of the forces of reaction!
But, clearly, to admit that the Party made a fundamental error would cut at the claim to infallibility. Hence, there is the SOP -- the Standard Operating Procedure. If sticking by the Line is too costly, the Party and its intellectuals acknowledge the 'error', but immediately add that the 'error' was just a tactical one! True to the SOP, Namboodiripad concluded, "Despite the omissions and commissions, the Party adopted a policy which was by and large correct during the Quit India struggle."
That is because the Hitler-Stalin Pact was correct, it was a clever counter-move: The capitalist-imperialists conspired to set Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union, Namboodiripad maintained; by entering into a Pact with Hitler, Stalin foiled their conspiracy. The consequence was as decisive as it was immediate: "Hitler could now turn westwards," the General Secretary noted with satisfaction... That is why the Indian Communist Party characterised the War as an Imperialist War in this phase, and insisted that the Congress take advantage of the difficulties of Britain to push it in India -- for Britain was arrayed against Hitler who was the ally of the Soviet Union. Of course, Hitler turned perfidious: In spite of the Pact, he invaded The Only Fatherland. The War immediately turned into a Peoples War, the General Secretary explains. And that is why the Communist Party insisted that Gandhi and the Congress desist from doing anything which will inconvenience the British -- for they were now allied with the Soviet Union. "The characterisation of the war by Communists as 'imperialist' in the first phase and as 'peoples war' in the second phase was based on one and the same principle," Namboodiripad wrote. "It is certainly a crucial issue what attitude the ruling classes take towards the Soviet Union which is destined to decide the future of human society." This in 1986! "The Communist Party had never hidden its stand on this issue," he declared. Not just the Communists, "Everyone who is interested in man's onward march to socialism would take the same stand," Namboodiripad declared.
All this in a book published in 1986! In any event, there had been an advance. In 1984, Namboodiripad had denounced mention of their doings. In 1986 he acknowledged the 'error'. Three years did not pass and he was talking more about the 'mistake', and less about the explanations for it! So, when they come down on us, we just have to wait a while.
But Namboodiripad's press conference, it turned out, was just the opening salvo, as we shall see.
The Observer
January 15, 1999
Arun Shourie is not a historian. He is a mythologist of Hindu communalism. He is a political pornographer," declared one of these eminent historians, K N Panikkar, in Kerala the other day. He had been asked for an answer to the facts I had set out in Eminent Historians. And he was giving reasons why it was beneath his dignity to give one.
He had been a little less lofty just a few weeks ago! And had deigned to write an entire article trying to explain the facts I had set out about the goings on in the Indian Council of Historical Research. "This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then," he had written in The Asian Age. I had shown that the story they had planted -- about 'rational' having been made into 'national,' had been a complete forgery.
I had also drawn attention to the way large sums had been consumed in projects of the ICHR - such as the Towards Freedom Project - and how little had come of them. He wrote that The Times of India too had put out a front-page story about the Towards Freedom Project the previous year. And the historians had clarified the facts through a public statement... They had not received a penny. They had worked in a purely honorary capacity...
We have seen more of the facts since. But what he said - "This is an old charge..."- is something to bear in mind -- there is never a right time to ask a question about them. If events are still fresh, their response always is: "But where are the facts?" If you happen to have enumerated and substantiated the twenty facts about which evidence is in, their response is: "But he has not taken into account item 21; this selective focus on just a handful of facts shows that he is working to a purpose." When sufficient time has elapsed, and you have garnered and presented evidence about all the facts, their response is: "but this is an old charge. That he is raking it up now shows how the forces of reaction are panic-stricken at the growing consolidation of forces of secularism and democracy."
And each time they set forth a spate of angry words! "If he believes, as he apparently does, that the fame of historians like S Gopal, R S Sharma, Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib who are held in high academic esteem, both nationally and internationally, are (sic) based on cheap manipulation," wrote Panikkar, "there must be something congenitally wrong with his mind. Otherwise it is possible that he is reflecting his own personal experience as to how a 'fellow' like him who writes communal mythology has come to be regarded a distinguished journalist."
"Finally, about hymen and virginity about which Shourie, as a good Hindu, is rightly concerned," Panikkar continued. "In the public eye his hymen has not remained intact, not because where he writes or to whom he gives interviews and articles, only because what he writes. Needless to say that the RSS publications carry his interview and articles only because they are rabidly communal. He cannot hope to remain a virgin after selling himself in the flesh market. Being a BJP member of Parliament and an ideologue of Hindu communalism, Shourie should get his hymen tested, if he is still under misconception about his virginity."
That is scholarly response. Indeed, in their circles it passes for 'devastating refutation'! But one must go the extra mile: Proclaim your belief in double-standards -- yes, I do what he does, but I do so because I believe in The Cause!
"As for me, unlike him, I do not hunt with the hound and run with the hare," Panikkar continued, though it wasn't clear what the colloquism was in aid of. "I contribute signed articles to the publications of the Communist Party, because I believe in the ideals it stands for -- democracy, secularism and socialism. By doing so, if my hymen is broken, I do not lament it, as Shourie does."
All this as an answer to the facts about the working of the ICHR to which I had drawn attention!
Since, then, an additional mountain of facts has been published. About pilferage, about doctored textbooks, about the intellectual dishonesty in the way these eminents treat facts and sources. Their response now is twofold. First, an entire theory! "There is not such thing as 'objectivity' in history," Panikkar told the audience in Kerala. So, when you find them concocting 'facts', you cannot but applaud them: Having liberated themselves from bourgeois scruples, they are propagating what will serve The Great Cause! And the evidence you adduce which establishes that what they are saying is a concoction, that evidence is of no consequence -- because in any case in history there is no such thing as objectivity! they plotted the assassination of CP Ramaswamy Aiyer, the Diwan -- these provide ready examples. The craven accolades our Communists showered on the Emergency when it was in force, and how, the moment it had ended, they coloured themselves up as heroes who had fought it -- these will do as well.
"The criticism that Communists decide their policy not in the Interests of their own country but in the interests of the Soviet Union is neither new nor original," thundered the Communist Party of India at Gandhiji and the Congress when it was confronted with evidence of having betrayed the National Movement during the Quit India struggle, and teamed up with the British. "It has been an old, very old gibe of the reactionary parties and their scribes the world over. It was the main theme the British Prosecutor played up against us In the Meerut Conspiracy Case. If 17 years later you make the same suggestion against us, we cannot but ask you -- Is this worthy of you?" (Communist Reply to the Congress Working Party Charges, by the General Secretary of the Party, PC Joshi, Communist Party of India, Calcutta, 1946, abridged version, pp 3-4.)
And always there is perhaps, I should now say, "there used to be" the decisive proof: Of having been vindicated by History! "All our brother parties had to live down this slander through their work among their own people," the Communist Party continued. "And If in the world of today there is any single political force which is growing, it is the Communist movement. If any banner has lost ground in every country, it is the bankrupt banner of blind anti-communalism."
Towards the end of 1983, VM Tarkunde Invited me to deliver the MN Roy Memorial Lecture for 1984. The lecture was held in Bombay on the same day in 1984 as It is every year - the birth anniversary of M N Roy. I documented the treacherous role the Communists had played during the 1942 Movement. Pritish Nandy, then Editor of The Illustrated Weekly, carried the text in a series. The text contained secret Masons of the Communist functionaries with British rulers, the request they made and the concessions they were given, the accounts they submitted to Richard Maxwell, the Home Member, and Richard Tottenham, the Additional Secretary who the brutal suppression of that campaign, reports in which the Communist Party set out the good work its members had done to help the government...
E M S Namboodiripad rushed to Bombay. Shourie is speaking for the forces of reaction, he thundered at a specially-convened press conference. These forces have panicked at the growing unity of secular and democratic forces.... They are unnerved that they will get a sound drubbing at the elections which are round the corner....
No elections were round any corner. Tarkunde had given his invitation five months earlier. The Communists' role In the Quit India Movement had not been the topic I had thought of in the first instance. I had thought that I would speak on 'Ideology as Blinkers,' and that I would Illustrate my argument with four examples. by the time of the lecture only one example was ready - that relating to the Communists during the 1942 Movement. And that is how I got to speak on the topic when I did. Nonetheless, 'conspiracy, 'unnerved', "elections round the corner" it was!
That was in 1984. Soon, E M S took a giant step towards owning up to what could no longer be hidden! Of course, he did so in the way characteristic of those who have appropriated The Great Cause! Yes, we entered into a liaison with the British. But we did so to master the arts of war: The dumbos in the Congress could not grasp the international situation, we alone could -- for we had The Theory, and we saw that the principal task was to save the country from the Japanese, that for this what was needed was a mastery of the arts of war, and that the only way to gain access to these arts at the time was to establish a working relationship with the British!
The rationalisation is typical of his A History of Indian Freedom Struggle, the 900-page book he published in 1986, just two years after that fusillade about my lecture.
Congress policy was wrong and suicidal, Namboodiripad wrote. Gandhi had not thought the matter through, he wrote, and had left no instructions on how the struggle should be carried on in the event of the principal leaders being arrested. The Congress had not prepared for guerrilla war against the advancing Japanese, he wrote. It had devised no way to Provide medical assistance to victims of bombing, nor had it thought of mobilising the masses against hoarders and profiteers, he wrote. It was the Communist Party which took up these tasks, Namboodiripad wrote. "It did not hesitate to establish contact with the government and accept the assistance and for carrying out this programme."
Thus, it was just a 'contact'! That 'contact' was established to train the cadres for guerrilla war against the invading Japanese. And what the comrades did was not to assist the British, they only "did not hesitate... to accept the assistance" which the British proffered! And the poor Communists had to take on this repugnant task because the Congress and Gandhi had not thought the matter through!
In any case, there were disagreements within the Congress too, Namboodiripad wrote. In fact, having themselves carted off to prison enabled the Congress leaders to escape responsibility for what had to be done. At the back of the Congress leaders' decision to launch the Quit India Movement was the object of furthering their bourgeois class interests by eventually negotiating and compromising with the British rulers, Namboodiripad wrote. It is the Communist Party, and not the Congress which acted in accordance with the resolutions of the Congress, he claimed. Moreover, though the Communist Party opposed the Quit India struggle, it simultaneously organised campaigns against the general policies of the government, he claimed.
The familiar blend of indignation, apologia, explanation, evasion. By the end of Namboodiripad's account, this of half-truths, smears, pasting motives on others, non-sequiters, contradictions becomes laughable.
"This does not, however, mean that the Communist Party did not commit any error in translating its general approach towards the Quit India struggle into Practical activities," the General of the Party allowed. "Failing to properly appreciating (sic) the popular feeling behind the struggle, the Party had often displayed a tendency to denounce those participating in the struggle as fascist agents. It had also made certain errors in organising mass struggles during this period. All such errors were subjected later to severe self-criticism, particularly in the Second Party Congress held in Calcutta in 1948." That last bit has an immediate practical consequence: If before their self- criticism you criticised their doings, you were clearly a fascist agent; if you do so after that, you are even more conclusively a fascist agent -- the Party having already acknowledged its 'error', that you are still raking up the 'old canard' is proof positive that you are doing so at the behest of the forces of reaction!
But, clearly, to admit that the Party made a fundamental error would cut at the claim to infallibility. Hence, there is the SOP -- the Standard Operating Procedure. If sticking by the Line is too costly, the Party and its intellectuals acknowledge the 'error', but immediately add that the 'error' was just a tactical one! True to the SOP, Namboodiripad concluded, "Despite the omissions and commissions, the Party adopted a policy which was by and large correct during the Quit India struggle."
That is because the Hitler-Stalin Pact was correct, it was a clever counter-move: The capitalist-imperialists conspired to set Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union, Namboodiripad maintained; by entering into a Pact with Hitler, Stalin foiled their conspiracy. The consequence was as decisive as it was immediate: "Hitler could now turn westwards," the General Secretary noted with satisfaction... That is why the Indian Communist Party characterised the War as an Imperialist War in this phase, and insisted that the Congress take advantage of the difficulties of Britain to push it in India -- for Britain was arrayed against Hitler who was the ally of the Soviet Union. Of course, Hitler turned perfidious: In spite of the Pact, he invaded The Only Fatherland. The War immediately turned into a Peoples War, the General Secretary explains. And that is why the Communist Party insisted that Gandhi and the Congress desist from doing anything which will inconvenience the British -- for they were now allied with the Soviet Union. "The characterisation of the war by Communists as 'imperialist' in the first phase and as 'peoples war' in the second phase was based on one and the same principle," Namboodiripad wrote. "It is certainly a crucial issue what attitude the ruling classes take towards the Soviet Union which is destined to decide the future of human society." This in 1986! "The Communist Party had never hidden its stand on this issue," he declared. Not just the Communists, "Everyone who is interested in man's onward march to socialism would take the same stand," Namboodiripad declared.
All this in a book published in 1986! In any event, there had been an advance. In 1984, Namboodiripad had denounced mention of their doings. In 1986 he acknowledged the 'error'. Three years did not pass and he was talking more about the 'mistake', and less about the explanations for it! So, when they come down on us, we just have to wait a while.
But Namboodiripad's press conference, it turned out, was just the opening salvo, as we shall see.
The Observer
January 15, 1999
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