07-07-2008, 12:32 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Marxist in Mecca </b>
The Pioneer Edit Desk
Religion is now a fellow traveller
In taking disciplinary action against its MP from Kannur in Kerala, Mr Abdullah Kutty, and demoting him in the party hierarchy for visiting Mecca on an Umrah, the CPI(M) has -- grant it this -- been perversely even-handed. In 2006, it had admonished Mr Subhas Chakraborty, the maverick Sports Minister of West Bengal, for worshipping at a Kali temple and declaring that he was a "Hindu and a Brahmin and only then a Marxist". He had also, around the same time, written an article comparing Mr Jyoti Basu to Lord Krishna. An overdose of the opiate of the masses -- the favoured Marxian expression for religion -- was too much for the CPI(M) leadership to tolerate. Episodes such as these, comic and bizarre as they may seem to mainstream society, exhibit the Indian Left's wrenching surrender to faith and religion as phenomena essential to the human condition. Indeed, as religion saw a surge and a grand revival in the dying decades of the 20th century, the certitudes of fellow travellers took a knocking. In the 1990s, an American Enterprise Institute survey of democracies assessed India, Ireland, Poland and the United States as the world's most spiritual societies. In Ireland, Communism is absent. <b>In the US, liberal, god-denying intellectuals are limited to campuses on the East Coast and in Berkeley, and to Prof Noam Chomsky's private dinners. Poland led the first major successful assault on Marxism by a faith-based group -- in the 1980s, the Catholic Church, blessed by Pope John Paul II (himself a Pole) and President Ronald Reagan, was a force multiplier for the Solidarity movement against the Soviet-backed dictatorship. In India, the Left has ceded ground inch by inch. While there has been no sudden, dramatic turnaround, the political and public discourse vis-Ã -vis religion is far different today than what it was in, say, 1983, 25 years ago.</b>
Despite 30 years of 'progressive' rule in West Bengal, the CPI(M) leadership there still sees Durga Puja as an important occasion for mass mobilisation and winning over voters. <b>Sikh comrades, led by the valiant Mr Harkishen Singh Surjeet, have not discarded the religious symbols introduced by Guru Govind Singh</b>. The wife of the General Secretary of the CPI(M) -- who is a redoubtable Communist herself -- wears a large, very visible bindi on her forehead, inspired perhaps by millions of Hindu women who do so likewise in the belief that they are protecting their husbands from enemies (bourgeois parties and forces of imperialism). Even in the public protests against the visiting US President George W Bush in 2006, the Communists addressed large crowds of religiously inspired Muslims. The concerns of the Muslim community were brought up again, only this past month, in an eleventh-hour attempt to thwart the India-US nuclear deal.
Fittingly for a world view built on the study of contradictions, Communism is trapped in the crevices between theory and praxis. In Xinjiang, Islamists are faith-based zealots terrorising the Chinese state. In Jammu & Kashmir, they become innocent victims of the Indian state. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez can expel Christian missionaries working among aboriginal tribals, accusing them of "imperialist infiltration" and CIA links. <b>In India, the Communists will defend the very missionaries against supposed fascist Hindu depredations</b>. May Karl Marx, descendant of Jewish rabbis, show them the light. <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
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The Pioneer Edit Desk
Religion is now a fellow traveller
In taking disciplinary action against its MP from Kannur in Kerala, Mr Abdullah Kutty, and demoting him in the party hierarchy for visiting Mecca on an Umrah, the CPI(M) has -- grant it this -- been perversely even-handed. In 2006, it had admonished Mr Subhas Chakraborty, the maverick Sports Minister of West Bengal, for worshipping at a Kali temple and declaring that he was a "Hindu and a Brahmin and only then a Marxist". He had also, around the same time, written an article comparing Mr Jyoti Basu to Lord Krishna. An overdose of the opiate of the masses -- the favoured Marxian expression for religion -- was too much for the CPI(M) leadership to tolerate. Episodes such as these, comic and bizarre as they may seem to mainstream society, exhibit the Indian Left's wrenching surrender to faith and religion as phenomena essential to the human condition. Indeed, as religion saw a surge and a grand revival in the dying decades of the 20th century, the certitudes of fellow travellers took a knocking. In the 1990s, an American Enterprise Institute survey of democracies assessed India, Ireland, Poland and the United States as the world's most spiritual societies. In Ireland, Communism is absent. <b>In the US, liberal, god-denying intellectuals are limited to campuses on the East Coast and in Berkeley, and to Prof Noam Chomsky's private dinners. Poland led the first major successful assault on Marxism by a faith-based group -- in the 1980s, the Catholic Church, blessed by Pope John Paul II (himself a Pole) and President Ronald Reagan, was a force multiplier for the Solidarity movement against the Soviet-backed dictatorship. In India, the Left has ceded ground inch by inch. While there has been no sudden, dramatic turnaround, the political and public discourse vis-Ã -vis religion is far different today than what it was in, say, 1983, 25 years ago.</b>
Despite 30 years of 'progressive' rule in West Bengal, the CPI(M) leadership there still sees Durga Puja as an important occasion for mass mobilisation and winning over voters. <b>Sikh comrades, led by the valiant Mr Harkishen Singh Surjeet, have not discarded the religious symbols introduced by Guru Govind Singh</b>. The wife of the General Secretary of the CPI(M) -- who is a redoubtable Communist herself -- wears a large, very visible bindi on her forehead, inspired perhaps by millions of Hindu women who do so likewise in the belief that they are protecting their husbands from enemies (bourgeois parties and forces of imperialism). Even in the public protests against the visiting US President George W Bush in 2006, the Communists addressed large crowds of religiously inspired Muslims. The concerns of the Muslim community were brought up again, only this past month, in an eleventh-hour attempt to thwart the India-US nuclear deal.
Fittingly for a world view built on the study of contradictions, Communism is trapped in the crevices between theory and praxis. In Xinjiang, Islamists are faith-based zealots terrorising the Chinese state. In Jammu & Kashmir, they become innocent victims of the Indian state. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez can expel Christian missionaries working among aboriginal tribals, accusing them of "imperialist infiltration" and CIA links. <b>In India, the Communists will defend the very missionaries against supposed fascist Hindu depredations</b>. May Karl Marx, descendant of Jewish rabbis, show them the light. <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->