Communism

As in everything, there are two parts in commies… one who sincerely believe in the ideology and are committed and the others who are simple opportunists, who do not want to do any work, but cover their laziness in words like worker rights etc. Lets the neglect for the time being this type of people, and concentrate on the committed communists (ie., who are sincere and committed towards the ideology)

1. Some of the committed communists are ones’ who see the various problems in the society are genuinely concerned about them. They try to get the answer to these questions. Being revolutionary in nature, their understanding is only superficial and do not try to go to the roots of the problem.

Understandably this is also the first natural human reaction… seeing a suffering and to confuse the symptom with the disease itself. They read the various ‘success’ stories of other communist nations (usually Russia in the past) and try to emulate them in them here. But, when one does not have full understanding of the problem, more often this emulation turns into blind imitation, without questioning the working or relevance of those thoughts in the Indian context.

2. The other part is the total lack of patience. They are committed are restless, but they do not develop the necessary patience to first understand the problem. After all the human being are one of the most complex of all, more so in the Indian context with LOTS of regions, religions, and history.

When there is a problem in the society, people with long-sightedness try to explain it in terms of human nature and tendencies and also try to address the evil in the person, not the person himself. But short-sighted people do not want to go into the details of the it. They simply try to find a person or group and abuse all the evils on him. Usually this will the prevailing custom or religion or group of the day.

It is in this mixture of points 1&2 which turns a committed communist into a dogmatic one, and abusing anything and everything Indian becomes his fashion statement an in the process become NIRs (Non-Indian Residents). He abuses its culture, its religions, its history, its institutions, its heroes… Criticism thus for them ceases to be means to the end and become the end in itself.. They start enjoying denigrating anything Indian and instead of hating the evil they start hating the wrongdoer (who in their case happens to be everyone who does not agree with them).

Here it is worth recalling what Swami Vivekananda says addressing the reactionary-reformists in his “My plan of campaign delivered” lecture in Madras: The history of the world teaches us that wherever there have been fanatical reforms, the only result has been that they have defeated their own ends… Such is the testimony of history against every fanatical movement, even for doing good. I have seen that. My own experience has taught me that. Therefore I cannot join any one of these condemning societies. Why condemn? There are evils in every society; everybody knows it. Every child of today knows it; he can stand upon a platform and give us a harangue on the awful evils in Hindu Society. Every uneducated foreigner who comes here globe-trotting takes a vanishing railway view of India and lectures most learnedly on the awful evils in India. We admit that there are evils. Everybody can show what evil is, but he is the friend of mankind who finds a way out of the difficulty… What good has been done except the creation of a most vituperative, a most condemnatory literature? … But that is no reformation. You must go down to the basis of the thing, to the very root of the matter. That is what I call radical reform. Put the fire there and let it burn upwards and make an Indian nation. And the solution of the problem is not so easy, as it is a big and a vast one.

…Boys, moustached babies, who never went out of Madras, standing up and wanting to dictate laws to three hundred millions of people with thousands of traditions at their back! Are you not ashamed? Stand back from such blasphemy and learn first your lessons! Irreverent boys, simply because you can scrawl a few lines upon paper and get some fool to publish them for you, you think you are the educators of the world, you think you are the public opinion of India! Is it so? This I have to tell to the social reformers of Madras that I have the greatest respect and love for them. I love them for their great hearts and their love for their country, for the poor, for the oppressed. But what I would tell them with a brother's love is that their method is not right; It has been tried a hundred years and failed. Let us try some new method.

Did India ever stand in want of reformers? Do you read the history of India? Who was Ramanuja? Who was Shankara? Who was Nânak? Who was Chaitanya? Who was Kabir? Who was Dâdu? Who were all these great preachers, one following the other, a galaxy of stars of the first magnitude? Did not Ramanuja feel for the lower classes? Did he not try all his life to admit even the Pariah to his community? Did he not try to admit even Mohammedans to his own fold? Did not Nanak confer with Hindus and Mohammedans, and try to bring about a new state of things? They all tried, and their work is still going on. The difference is this. They had not the fanfaronade of the reformers of today; they had no curses on their lips as modern reformers have; their lips pronounced only blessings. They never condemned. They said to the people that the race must always grow. They looked back and they said, "O Hindus, what you have done is good, but, my brothers, let us do better." They did not say, "You have been wicked, now let us be good." They said, "You have been good, but let us now be better." That makes a whole world of difference.

We must grow according to our nature. Vain is it to attempt the lines of action that foreign societies have engrafted upon us; it is impossible… I do not condemn the institutions of other races; they are good for them, but not for us. What is meat for them may be poison for us. This is the first lesson to learn. With other sciences, other institutions, and other traditions behind them, they have got their present system. We, with our traditions, with thousands of years of Karma behind us, naturally can only follow our own bent, run in our own grooves; and that we shall have to do.


But our Indian communists still find it easier to swallow chewed up crap of others, than do original thinking. In this context I also like the highlight the difference between Indian communists and the other world communists. China for example, is much different and what they proudly call “Communism the Chinese way”. Whereas the Indian communists are just hypocritical in most cases, and lack original thinking. Having said, I do welcome some efforts of people like Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. Not coz I agree with everything he says, but coz he showing willingness to hear and try new ideas and accept new realties.

One more problem is something inherent in communism. For them the world is comprises of two sections – Proletariat and bourgeois, and continuously in conflict (dialectics). True that differences lead to conflict in some cases, but they do not always, and more importantly conflict can be avoided. The rise of middle class and the failure of communism in India is the point in favour of this argument. This conflict theory when taken to the extreme tends into naxalism, while the other is type is intellectual polarization (the Marxist historians as they are called)

It is important that atleast we maintain a difference between ‘problem’ and the ‘person with problem’ instead of blindly hating all the communists. Ofcourse all this is about people who are sincere are want to do something. Not about some morons like the ones’ you get plenty on orkut who sit in US and enjoy ridiculing India and US.