Be it the Left or the trinamool, the political culture in the country and the state have merely fostered undemocratic practices and vandalism, Read an opinion piece by Sunanda Sanyal, an educationist and social thinker...
Tagore says in Crisis in Civilization that it’s a sin to lose faith in man. At the age of 80, I haven’t lost faith in the polity of Bengal. Commoners have become aware that in Bengal, the political culture has gone wrong. Gopalkrishna Gandhi, former governor of West Bengal, read a paper at the Bose Institute in Kolkata. According to one newspaper, he said, "politicians want power in order to loot the nation. Politicians, for example, organise looting of the natural resources. Under the circumstances, politics is money, money is politics."
Tapan Datta, a Trinamool Congress activist, was murdered because he opposed the illegal filling of a tank. His wife blames a minister for the crime. But I blame the whole episode on the Left, because it set no example of fair governance. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, former Chief Minister (CM), divided polity into us and them and the CM himself pelted back every stone that ‘them’ threw at ‘us’. He is reported to have ‘blown up’ the innocent people at Nandigram. But it is he who also said that he didn’t want to send in the state police force.
The present rulers in West Bengal are no better. The Chief Minister, who assured us that she would end partisanship when she became the Chief Minister, dishonours the past promise she had made. Syndicate raj – cartels of businessmen, ending all competition – is one of them. Goondaism among students is another. I think, present-day politics is based on goondaism. It’s the continuation of the previous Raj, the Left Front (LF) Government, led by the CPI-M. I trust Bengal’s polity won’t suffer goondaism any longer.
Back in the 1960’s, I happened to be very close to the CPI-M. There should have been a change for the better by 1977 when it came to power. But since 1987 it had been worsening politics as it resorted to rigging for reaching power. This was preceded by terrorism. For example, teachers were used in voter enrolment drive. Schools, colleges and universities provided the catchment area for young goondas. Led by the CPI-M, the LF did not allow other political groups to submit their nomination papers. So much for the democratic process for which student union elections should prepare the students. I remember when the president of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), attached to the CPI-M, came on TV and announced that they had 17 lakh members. The SFI would deploy the entire ‘election apparatus’ for the benefit of Leftist candidates.
The ‘entire election apparatus’ included youth, groups of motorbike riders, booth jammers – practically rigging some 100 odd assembly constituencies. That is, coming to power by whatever means.
Can such politicians be of help to polity? The only difference between the present ruling clique and the preceding one is that the former were a lot more organised, regimented and disciplined. They could, therefore, somewhat contain factionalism. But the present regime cannot.
The common complaint is that where the LF had a couple of factions, the Trinamool Congress has several for each district. So you ultimately end up greasing the palms of each one of the factions.
Bengal’s intellectuals aren’t comfortable either. The nations of the world have amassed, for internal security, such arsenals with which the world could be destroyed many times over. The late Amlan Datta, former Vice Chancellor of Viswabharati University, hoped that a Renaissance of sorts might save the world. It would of course be different from the one ushered in by Raja Rammohun Roy and witnessed in undivided Bengal.
It‘s unlikely that such a Renaissance would be championed by a Bengali and that person would not be a Leftist after all because the man who introduced Leftism into India, MN Roy, said, “A year after its unhistorical victory in Russia, the revolution failed in Germany, where it ought have triumphed if Marx was not a false prophet.”
Tagore says in Crisis in Civilization that it’s a sin to lose faith in man. At the age of 80, I haven’t lost faith in the polity of Bengal. Commoners have become aware that in Bengal, the political culture has gone wrong. Gopalkrishna Gandhi, former governor of West Bengal, read a paper at the Bose Institute in Kolkata. According to one newspaper, he said, "politicians want power in order to loot the nation. Politicians, for example, organise looting of the natural resources. Under the circumstances, politics is money, money is politics."
Tapan Datta, a Trinamool Congress activist, was murdered because he opposed the illegal filling of a tank. His wife blames a minister for the crime. But I blame the whole episode on the Left, because it set no example of fair governance. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, former Chief Minister (CM), divided polity into us and them and the CM himself pelted back every stone that ‘them’ threw at ‘us’. He is reported to have ‘blown up’ the innocent people at Nandigram. But it is he who also said that he didn’t want to send in the state police force.
The present rulers in West Bengal are no better. The Chief Minister, who assured us that she would end partisanship when she became the Chief Minister, dishonours the past promise she had made. Syndicate raj – cartels of businessmen, ending all competition – is one of them. Goondaism among students is another. I think, present-day politics is based on goondaism. It’s the continuation of the previous Raj, the Left Front (LF) Government, led by the CPI-M. I trust Bengal’s polity won’t suffer goondaism any longer.
Back in the 1960’s, I happened to be very close to the CPI-M. There should have been a change for the better by 1977 when it came to power. But since 1987 it had been worsening politics as it resorted to rigging for reaching power. This was preceded by terrorism. For example, teachers were used in voter enrolment drive. Schools, colleges and universities provided the catchment area for young goondas. Led by the CPI-M, the LF did not allow other political groups to submit their nomination papers. So much for the democratic process for which student union elections should prepare the students. I remember when the president of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), attached to the CPI-M, came on TV and announced that they had 17 lakh members. The SFI would deploy the entire ‘election apparatus’ for the benefit of Leftist candidates.
The ‘entire election apparatus’ included youth, groups of motorbike riders, booth jammers – practically rigging some 100 odd assembly constituencies. That is, coming to power by whatever means.
Can such politicians be of help to polity? The only difference between the present ruling clique and the preceding one is that the former were a lot more organised, regimented and disciplined. They could, therefore, somewhat contain factionalism. But the present regime cannot.
The common complaint is that where the LF had a couple of factions, the Trinamool Congress has several for each district. So you ultimately end up greasing the palms of each one of the factions.
Bengal’s intellectuals aren’t comfortable either. The nations of the world have amassed, for internal security, such arsenals with which the world could be destroyed many times over. The late Amlan Datta, former Vice Chancellor of Viswabharati University, hoped that a Renaissance of sorts might save the world. It would of course be different from the one ushered in by Raja Rammohun Roy and witnessed in undivided Bengal.
It‘s unlikely that such a Renaissance would be championed by a Bengali and that person would not be a Leftist after all because the man who introduced Leftism into India, MN Roy, said, “A year after its unhistorical victory in Russia, the revolution failed in Germany, where it ought have triumphed if Marx was not a false prophet.”
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