Left Perspectives in South AsiaMeena Dhanda
Pritam Singh
At the Annual Conference of the British Association of South
Asian Studies held at the Bath College of Higher Education on
April 11-13, 1997 , a panel discussion on Left Perspectives in
South Asia was convened by Pritam Singh on April 11. The
panelists were: Yogendra Yadav (Center for the Study of
Developing Societies, Delhi), Ranjan Poudyal (London School Of
Economics and Save the Children Fund, Kathmandu), Mohammed
Waseem (St. Antonyís College, Oxford and the University of
Islamabad), Jairus Banaji (Wolfson College, Oxford and the Union
Research Group, Bombay), Surinder Jodhka (Queen Elizabeth House,
Oxford and the University of Hyderabad) and Robin Archer
(Corpus Christi College, Oxford). In planning the format of the
panel discussion, no guidelines were given to the panelists
except to try to focus less on past introspection and more on
futuristic thinking. This was done deliberately, in order to
enable the spontaneous articulation of their engagement with and
reflections on the 'Left' in their own country. All the
panelists had a chance to revise their contributions in the
written comments they put forward for the preparation of this
report.
I
It is rare for Left scholars and activists from South Asia to be
able to meet each other and exchange ideas and experiences on
issues of mutual interest. The panel discussion at Bath was
expected to make a contribution to enriching our understanding
of the Left in different countries in South Asia. A comparative
assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the Left in
different countries of South Asia could be mutually beneficial
to the Leftist political forces in these countries. In
organizing the panel, the aim was to get at least one
commentator on each of the five countries of South Asia-
Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. As we did not
succeed in arranging a speaker on Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, this
aim was only partially fulfilled. Robin Archer was requested to
provide an over-all non-country specific view on the
contributions to the panel discussion.
In his introductory remarks, Pritam Singh observed that despite
significant diversity in the economy, politics and culture of
the countries in South Asia and the regions within them, there
were also several areas of similarity between them. He
highlighted one issue each in the realms of the economy,
politics and culture to serve as examples of similarities. The
South Asian region, he emphasized, had the biggest concentration
of the poor in the world. The absolute size of the people below
poverty line in South Asia was even bigger than that in the Sub-
Saharan Africa, which in public imagination is associated more
with poverty than South Asia. Burdened with huge budgetary
deficits- partly because of the pressure of poverty- all the
South Asian economies were having to face the World Bank- IMF
led economic reforms. The Left in South Asia has to confront
with this over-all economic scenario of huge poverty accompanied
by increased global integration of South Asian economies.
In the arena of politics, in all the South Asian countries,
except Nepal, the disintegration of the centrist political
formations, e.g. the Congress in India and the Pakistan Peoples
Party in Pakistan, was accompanied by the rising importance of
the right-wing political forces, like the BJP in India and the
Muslim League in Pakistan. In the cultural sphere, the
globalisation of the media and the surge of consumerist culture
is posing a challenge that the Left in South Asia has not
experienced in the past. This challenge calls for imaginative,
innovative and creative strategies from the Left.
Pritam Singh also urged the need for a critical consideration on
the spreading political culture of violations of human rights
and of intolerance towards minorities in all the countries of
South Asia. The increasing public acceptance of violence by the
State against its political opponents and even ordinary citizens
was a disturbing phenomenon which the Left ought to confront
very seriously. The rising power of the State against the
citizens is antithetical to the Leftís vision of the empowerment
of ordinary working people. The fight for the defense and the
advancement of human rights is a historical opportunity for the
Left to correct its deficient record on human rights .
II
Yogendra Yadav, the first speaker on the panel, situated his
comments in his ongoing project of "re-defining radical
politics". It was his intention to start a debate on what is,
and what should be the discourse of the Left from a specifically
Indian point of view. It was for him not an academic question to
inquire if there is a future for the idea of socialism in India,
but a question of praxis. Therefore, for Yadav, the answer to
the question, depends upon what we expect the "radical"
political agents to be. The standard notion of the radical is
that of someone who is "progressive, forward looking,
internationalist, cosmopolitan, scientific-realist, and
modern". Being modern here is dependent upon "western notions
of modernity". In criticizing this western-centric notion of
the "modern" Yadav clarified that his was not a critique from a
post-modern perspective. What he urged rather was to think of
versions of radicalism in traditional forms of community.
Political activists imbued by their "situated radicalism" would
carry the traces of their location. What we can hope to achieve
on this model of political action, Yadav claimed, is not
Socialism with a capital ëSí, traditionally defined as a
proletariat revolution, but a "series of socialisms".
He stressed the importance of accepting "tradition as a source
of radicalism". Indigenous interpretations of Indian politics,
ideas, and systems of knowledge must provide the content of such
a radicalism. It follows that the "politics of culture" becomes
crucial in this refashioning of radicalism with the central
task of producing "counter-symbols" and "counter-texts". Yadav
also emphasized the need to include "the new types of agents of
change", for example, the disadvantaged within communities who
are the victims of modern development. A thorough-going search
for models of radicalism must be open to the "other traditions
of radicalism" including those inspired by Gandhi and Ambedkar.
If, at the heart of socialism is the idea of the revaluation of
all values, then, a socialist cannot be complacent about what
models of radical transformation are accepted. Radical
transformation, Yadav reiterated, "does not begin with the pre-
given models of radical transformation.... but here and now."
III
The second presentation by Ranjan Poudyal, in contrast to the
ideological deliberations of the first, charted the historical
development of the rise of the Communist Left in Nepal from a
small party organized by Nepali youth under the influence of the
Indian communists in 1949 to the only Communists Party in South
Asia to form a government in the 1990s. But like Yadav, Poudyal
too was critical of the bolt-on approach of the Communists. "The
ideas of socialism that had roots in Eastern Europe were not
adapted to the local conditions but were followed in letter and
spirit as directed externally, this led to the communist
comrades to ignore the ground realities of Nepal."
The Nepali Communist Party did not join the movement for the
armed overthrow of the monarchical Rana regime in 1950-51.
Captivated by their "overjealous adherence to dogmas" they
considered the Nepali Congress Party, which was a leading force
in this movement, as the ënational capitalist bourgeoisieí
and ëpro-Indiaí (which was true to a large extent). They
denounced the Delhi Agreement brokered between the monarch and
the Nepali Congress, as a betrayal of the Nepali people and
joined hands with the "reactionary" ëGurkha Parishadí to start
an anti-India campaign. Subsequently, the communists formed the
National Peopleís Front with Tanka P. Acharya -leader of the
Praja Parishad Party - and succeeded in becoming a strong
national rival to the Nepali Congress. The aim of the Front was
to establish a Peoplesí Democracy on the Chinese model. The
banning of the Front in January 1951, mainly due to the
communistsí opposition on the monarchy, forced the communists to
go underground. Their poor showing in the elections of 1958,
after the lifting of the ban in 1956, was due to their isolation
from other political groups, ideological differences between
party leaders and a direct result of the ban.
Paradoxically, the ban allowed party resources to be spent
in "developing grass-roots support". The Communists "emerged as
the best organized party in Nepal; the bulk of its members came
from the peasantry, especially the landless, lower middle-class
peasants, students, lower middle-class intelligentsia and the
petty business community." After the constitutional coup by the
King, dislodging the Congress government, and replacing the
multi-party parliamentary "Westminister style government" by a
one-party Panchayat system, when effectively all parties were
banned, the leaders of the Communists did not leave the country
unlike their rivals from the Congress party who took exile in
India. It was the underground organization facilitated by the
leaderships presence that enabled the Communist Party to grow
despite several divisive moves by the Panchayat Government,
including cooption of members.
Poudyal listed several internal and external factors that led to
the ëpopular uprisingí against the Panchayat system in the late
80s. Interestingly, the support of the Indian government for the
oppositional forces in Nepal at that time was attributed by
Poudyal to Rajiv Gandhiís "neo-colonial aspirations within South
Asia", a price for which was extracted, according to him, in the
draft treaty endorsed between Nepal and India in 1990.
The Communists first came to power as an interim coalition
government consisting of the United Left Front and the Congress
Party which led to the representation of some members of the
radical left in the committee that drafted the new constitution
promulgated in 1990. Poudyal noted, with a touch of irony, that
the current coalition partners of the Communists -- the
Rashtriya Prajatantra Party- made up of the members of the
former Panchayat system, are "the same people against which the
congress-communist combine had fought during 1989." He said that
the name ëcommunistí was "a misnomer" for a party that had
accepted the role of the King, and was pursuing free market
policies dictated by the IMF and the World Bank, "supporting
deregulation and privatization". The only detectable left
element in the ruling Communists was "their commitment to social
welfare policies which they attempted to implement in 1994." And
that, according to Poudyal, made them more like a socialist
party than a Communist one.
Disenchantment with the ruling Communist Party is also expressed
in the call by ultra left parties, such as the Communist Party
of Nepal (Maoists) for armed rebellion and the rejection of the
monarchy and the constitution. Ending on an "optimistic note",
Poudyal expressed the hope that the threat of the ultra left
might wake up the communists in power to take serious note of
the poverty and deprivation suffered by the people of Nepal,
much as the Kuomintang government in Taiwan and the postwar
government in S. Korea were prompted by the communists to
institute "redistributive land reform and agrarian reform that
subsequently laid the basis for their spectacular ëequity before
and during growthí economics".
In the course of his brief history of the communistsí rise to
power in Nepal, Poudyal asked "why have the communists succeeded
in Nepal while they have not in other countries in South Asia?"
His answer identified their "organizational capacity.. built up
in the 30 years of underground work" as the single most
important factor. The spread of education under the Panchayat
government combined with the persistently high level of poverty
were also listed as the reasons for the communistsí appeal.
Finally, the weakness of the other parties in the fray, mainly
the Nepali Congress Party, was thought to have propped up the
support for the communists.
IV
Ranjan Poudyalís illuminating presentation was followed by an
expert recounting of the 50 year history of the Left in Pakistan
by Mohammad Waseem . It is difficult to do a better job than was
accomplished by Waseem of compressing the complex stories that
need to be told and heard. We reproduce his account verbatim.
"In Pakistan, the history of the leftist politics can be divided
into three phases: 1947-67, 1967-85 and 1985 onwards. During the
first phase, leaders and ideological orientations of the pre-
independence days predominated. Upto 1954 when the Pakistan
Communist Party (PCP) was banned, the leftist movement was led
by the cadres of the Communist Party of India (CPI) which
included Sajjad Zaheer and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. They believed in the
classic scenario of a communist takeover of the sate based on
the model of the Russian Revolution. They believed that
decolonization had only led to continuation of the rule of
Western imperialism through the national bourgeoisie, that
partition was the typical British method of divide and rule and
that the leftist intelligentsia should lead the movement to
overthrow the government with the help of the Soviet Union. This
leadership belonged to the tiny radical section of the Muslim
middle classes and the landed elite, especially from the UP and
Punjab. Some of them were arrested for being accomplices in a
failed coup attempt led by General Akbar Khan and were tried in
the 1951 Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case. They relied on the tiny
trade union leadership to spread their message along the lines
of scientific socialism. A radical group APP (Azad Pakistan
Party) included scions of big families such as Sardar Shaukat
Hayat, Mian Iftikharuddin and Mazhar Ali Khan."
"In the early 1950s, the federal government increasingly
centralized powers in its own hands largely at the expense of
provinces. In eleven years, the Center dismissed ten governments
in the provinces. Since political, economic and military power
in the Center rested in the hands of Punjabis and Urdu-speaking
migrants from India -- called mohajirs -- Pathans, Sindhis,
Bengalis and the Baluch developed provincial autonomy movements
in all provinces other than Punjab. The left generally supported
these movements. It provided them an ideological cushion in the
form of the right of national self-determination in the context
of the Marxist-Leninist approach to the national question. The
leftist cadres and workers, a majority of whom were Punjabis or
mohajirs, joined hands with provincial leaderships most of whom
belonged to the tribal and feudal elite. As the government of
Pakistan opted for capitalist path to industrial development,
entered into military pacts sponsored by Washington, upheld the
cause of Islam both internally and externally and struggled to
counter the perceived hostility of India, the ëleftistí alliance
demanded socialist model development, projected an anti-
imperialist stance with a demand for a pro-Moscow foreign
policy, favoured secularism and stressed the need to cultivate
friendly relations with India. From 1957 to 1967 these elements
were united on the platform of the National Awami Party (NAP) in
a grand alliance of the left under the leadership of the
celebrated populist leader from East Bengal Maulana Bhashani. It
included G. M. Syed of Sindh, Ghaffar Khan of NWFP, Achakzai of
Baluchistan and radical intelligentsia from Punjab, Karachi and
elsewhere. During this period, the idiom of class struggle was
overtaken by the national question both within and outside NAP.
However, leftist organizations such as Sindh Harri Committee
continued to struggle for the rights of the rural masses."
"The so-called Bhashani era of politics of the left in Pakistan
came to an end in the late 1960s when the NAP was spit into pro-
Peking and pro-Moscow factions led by Bhashani and Wali Khan
respectively. Other factions emerged such as Mazdoor Kissan
Party (MKP) and Pakistan Socialist Party (PSP) led by Major
Ishaq and C. R. Aslam respectively. Meanwhile, the Pakistan
Peoples Party (PPP) of Z. A. Bhutto was able to spearhead a mass-
based leftist movement of a populist variety. The new leftist
cadres were relatively non-elite, less articulate,
less ëscientificí in their Marxist training, less secular and
more rooted in the working classes than their predecessors.
Under Bhutto, politics of the left lost its ideological tinge,
became oriented to electoral politics in the context of
parliamentary democracy and moved away from its traditional
allies in the autonomy-oriented provincial leaderships. After
the 1977 coup, Zia persecuted the PPP leadership, cadres and
workers. The party moved increasingly towards the centre in
terms of policy orientation in order to become a legitimate
contender for power in the military-dominated political system
of Pakistan. During the Zia period, small groups of leftist
cadres continued to function, among them the newly formed Awami
National Party (ANP) with the old NAP at its centre, the
(Sindhi) Awami Tehrik (AT) of Rasool Bux Paleejo, Qaumi Mohaz
Azadi (QMA) of Mairaj Mohammad Khan, a new alliance of leftist
groups Awami Jamhoori Mohaz (AJM) and minuscule parties such as
Pakistan National Party (PNP) of Bizenjo, MKP of Fatehyab Ali
Khan and PSP of C. R. Alam."
"After the elections were held in 1985, it became clear that the
politics of the left had lost momentum in terms of both
representation of the leftist cadres in the traditional leftist
parties such as PPP and ANP, and erosion of socialist idiom from
their electoral campaign. Various factors can be highlighted as
indicators of marginalization of leftist politics in Pakistan:
the loss of legitimacy of socialism as a doctrine after the
fall of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe and later in
Afghanistan in the early 1990s; de-radicalization of the
main ëleftistí party PPP under the leadership of Benazir Bhutto;
and the freeing of the ethnic-provincial movements from reliance
on socialist rhetoric. The decline of leftist politics in
Pakistan is reflected through the lack of organizational
activity of the left in terms of parliamentary or
extraparliamentary politics on the one hand and the absence of
policy-related issues from political discussion such as land
reforms and protection of the rights of industrial labour as
well as social welfare orientation of the state and
redistribution of wealth in general. In the late 1990s, politics
of the left in Pakistan is completely marginalized in the
context of national or provincial politics. However, small
factions of party cadres on the left continue to work among
trade unions, literary groups, student organizations and
constituency-level political workers operating from the platform
of larger parties."
V
Surely, it takes time to absorb the information contained in
narratives as detailed as the ones provided by Poudyal and
Waseem. It also takes a great deal of thought to begin asking
questions about them? Why, for instance, does Poudyal raise a
doubt about whether a self-proclaimed communist party is a
communist party or not, and Waseem seems not to question that Z.
A. Bhuttoís PPP was a leftist party? What is it about a
political party that rightfully earns it the title of being a
communist party and do similar criteria apply in the
identification of parties of the ëleftí? One has to be thankful
when second-order questions about what it is for a party to be
communists or not are made the subject of reflective scrutiny.
It is exactly such questions that came under the incisive
observations of Jairus Banaji in relation to the Communist
parties of India.
Banaji distinguished between (1) ëworking class partiesí and (2)
parties that are ëpro working classí. It is almost self-evident
that the Communist Parties of India belong to the latter
category. This fact, and the historical trajectories which
reflect it, are in turn underpinned, according to him, by "the
complex and now rapidly varying relationships between
the ëeliteí, the Indian middle classes, and the labouring groups
and communities." Indian ënationalismí was largely a reflection
of the "hegemonic" relationship between these social groups
or ëstrataí, and the (undivided) C. P. was no exception to this
pattern of ëhegemonyí but a further instrumentalisation and
expression of it. Indian ëCommunismí was a determinate form in
which the dominant elite/middle class bloc exercised its
hegemony over labouring communities that were "too dispersed,
too fragmented, and too inchoate as crystallized ëclassesí to
establish any sense of their own autonomy as historical and
social subjects. ..Indian politics has, till very recently, been
the sphere of action and privilege of the Indian middle classes."
In a provisional way, Banaji then tried to abstract from the
underlying social determinations and look at the "politics" of
the left parties as "left-wing" politics. He noted that the
Communists-party tradition in India was moulded by the
circumstances in which it was formed and grew up, namely, a
succession of working class defeats throughout the world (from
Spain and France to China) and the triumph of Stalinism in
Russia. "This truncated the field of possibilities in a drastic
way and led to a rapid and utterly premature foreclosure of ways
of imagining and creating left-wing politics." ëMarxistí
politics came to be defined by its "extraordinary formalism, as
if politics was essentially a field of rituals, and parties
analogous to religious communities." The authoritarianism of the
parties was manifested in numerous ways - in the cult of
leadership, in the unspoken assumption that wage labourers were
not capable of organising themselves or their own affairs, let
alone their society, in the related assumption that women were
not political subjects but at best sources of political nurture,
support, and encouragement, in the notion that ëtheoryí is the
prerogative of leaders, and that the experience of ordinary
people can bring no illumination to it. "The masses were
literally dumb witnesses to the unfolding of a historical drama
that was theirs only in name."
Whatever the sources of this authoritarianism, it has clearly
been the single heaviest legacy in the traditions and
contemporary history of left politics. It is surely deeply
significant, Banaji noted, "that there has never been a native
tradition of intellectual and political anarchism in the history
of India, indeed, not even an imported tradition...." Whereas
the bourgeois parties legitimised their control of mass
followings with Gandhiís notion of trusteeship, the C. P.s have
done so in the garb of Leninism (the ëpartyí, the ëcaptureí of
power, the ëtransitioní to socialism..)
A consequence of the above, is that politics is defined by the
left parties in terms of a single minded pursuit of power. Power
as a web of social relationships is "mystified" by being seen as
a thing that can be ëcapturedí. "The state apparatuses in which
power is diffused and instrumentalised seem as if they are at
the creative will of the political executive (of Basu & Co.),
but this, clearly, is the necessary illusion of all power (at
least under capitalist forms of governance). Thus the logic of
power can only come into play as counterfinality,
the ëapparatusesí survive with all the deadweight of the
practico-inert, the revolutionary vision in State and Revolution
becomes inevitably and necessarily, a utopia, something a party
which has ëcapturedí power (i.e. been captured by power) must
postpone indefinitely. Witness the fact that even of the
abysmally small area of land technically available for
redistribution as part of W. Bengalís land reforms, less than
ten percent has actually been distributed."
The myopic obsession with ëpowerí has in turn, according to
Banaji, "distorted the vision of the left parties in quite
fundamental ways." As noted above, not only is ordinary
experience devalorised as a contribution to knowledge, but a
politics of workersí control, the drive to create autonomous
forms of democratic institutions, self-managing enterprises and
workers collectives are denounced too. It is forgotten
that "utopian socialism was not denied in the political birth of
Marxism but sublated within it, carried silently within its own
larger and more powerful vision. The setting up of an abstract
and of course false opposition between utopian and scientific
socialism can only have the effect of finally destroying the
credibility of party-Communists when workers do begin to move
forward, in future, and in a more powerful way, to visions of a
society where resources are increasingly subject to collective
and more rational forms of management. When this happens,
the ëCommunistsí will become reactionary."
Banajiís final point in criticism of the party Communistsí was
regarding the nature of their opposition to capitalism. They
oppose capitalism "less in the name of the future than of the
past. They find its most advanced forms also the most
threatening and sinister, its most backward features and
structures the most idyllic....New technologies, large-scale
production, international integration of production processes,
the globalisation of financial markets, the decline of national
(family-owned, family-run) capitalism ..are (sometimes only
implicitly) seen as developments which the ëleftí should
oppose." The most devastating consequence of the political
defeat of the working class earlier this century, according to
Banaji, has been this failure or rejection of
modernism/modernity on the part of the left, "the failure to see
that only by identifying consciously with the most advanced
features and forms of modern capitalism and modern capitalist
organisation will Communists be able to make valuable
contributions to the workers movements (working class parties)
of the future; for the Communist organisation of society,
whenever that comes about, will surely only come about as a
superseding of what is most advanced in contemporary capitalism,
and for that dialectical transcendence to occur, there has to be
a moment of ëacceptanceí, of a critical dominance and the even
longer term moment of actual ëdÈpassementí."
Banaji concluded by asserting that "there are whole areas of
social and cultural life where even the most modern and advanced
capitalism can never attain genuine modernity but will remain
inexorably primitive and backward...a Communist modernity will
be more complete.." In an oblique reference to the first
speakerís disenchantment with the idea of ëSocialismí, Banaji
commented that "the idea of socialism is not dead. I think, the
idea of socialism.. (in the sense of a movement of all wage-
earners).. is not born as yet."
The thrust of Banajiís presentation was to judge social forces
in terms of what people do, not what they say and thus from a
reflective distance be willing to consider that the Communists
Parties may not be ëCommunistí. As an aside, he had remarked
that he considered the ideology of nationalism as "backward"
and "reactionary", which is what made the Partition of 1947, no
matter how inevitable it might have been, for him, "a tragedy."
VI
The leftís underdeveloped understanding of the complex question
of nationalities and more centrally the problem of ethnic
identities formed the subject of Surinder Jodhkaís presentation.
Jodhka noted that the "crises" of Punjab and the Northeast
followed by the strong separatist movement in Kashmir as well as
the pan Indian Hindutva movement has brought the question of
ethnic identities to the centre stage of Indian political and
social life. These movements have changed the terms of political
discourse in India. The earlier "discourse of developmentalism
centred around the issue of poverty, backwardness and
inequalities" has been replaced by a politics increasingly
articulated in terms of "community-country, regional-national or
communalism-secularism". Jodhka argued that it was easy for the
mainstream Left to engage with the earlier kind of politics and
play an effective and influential role, because issues such as
land reforms or equitable distribution of developmental benefits
could readily and forcefully be articulated in the framework
of 'class analysis'. "The question of ethnicity, however, was
not easily amenable to a pure class analysis. This
theoretical 'weakness' of the Left to come to terms with such
cultural processes had far reaching implications for the way it
tailored its response to such movements."
The Left's conception of secularism (or for that matter
communalism) was not very different, according to Jodhka, from
the one espoused by the Indian Constitution. "Secularism, as it
is understood in mainstream Indian politics, draws its origins
from an evolutionist framework of ëmodernizationí, where
secularization is seen as a functional prerequisite of a
developed society and a natural corollary of the process of
economic change. Thus, the Left in India has been a part of
the 'centrist consensus' on the question of ënationalismí
and ëdevelopmentí. Any popular movement that deviated from such
a teleological notion of secularism was seen to be an inherently
abnormal phenomenon and a consequence of some kind of 'elite'
manipulation. The perceived role of the Left, as of other
secular parties, was to educate the masses about their ërealí
interest."
Jodhka's criticism of the mainstream Left on the nationality
question was not directed from a position, such as that of the
non-parliamentary Maoist groups, that "all regional and
linguistic groups in contemporary India are essentially
nationalities and therefore they have the natural right to
national autonomy." Jodhka found such a framework simplistic in
that it does not take account of processes such as migrations,
the nature of capitalist development, and the
consequent "integration/marginalization of the different
regions."
Jodhka concluded by making a case for the "autonomy" of "the
sphere of culture". A left-wing understanding of ethnic
movements must approach the question of ethnic identities
from "a historical perspective and not from an evolutionist
framework of 'traditional-modern' societies where all ethnic
mobilizations get seen as 'reactionary' and backward-looking
politics...Not all movements using a non-secular, non-class
language should be viewed as communalist and elite-manipulated
mobilizations." The appropriate framework for an understanding
of these movements, Jodhka suggested, is that
of "democratisation and human rights", therefore, a left-wing
understanding should "begin with an analysis of the politics of
specific identity movements".
VII
The last talk from the panelists, was from Robin Archer who had
been asked to give a non-country specific, general overview of
what, as an interested outsider, he saw as the preoccupation of
the Left in South Asia, represented in a limited way in the
preceding contributions of the panelists, and to connect these
to a global perspective on the Left, if at all it was possible
to do so.
Robin Archer argued that socialism is both a goal - an
aspiration for a better kind of society - and a movement which
seeks (at least partially) to achieve that goal . In South Asia
the Left is often closely identified with Marxism, but Marxism
is only one version of socialism. Archer suggested that there is
a more general goal - a fairer distribution of power and
resources -- which most versions of socialism could share. But,
whatever the goal, he insisted that it had to have some positive
ethical content. It could not just refer to the rejection of
whatever values and institutions happen to exist. For this
reason he was doubtful about whether it would be possible to
define socialism as ëradicalismí.
But nor could the content of socialist goals be defined solely
by appealing to those values which happen to exist. For, if that
involved basing socialism on the dominant existing values, it
would ultimately collapse socialism into conservatism. And if it
involved basing socialism on subordinate existing values, there
would still be a need to provide independent reasons for why
that set of existing values, and not some other set, should form
the basis for socialism. For these reasons he was doubtful about
whether it would be possible to define socialism as ësituated
radicalismí.
Archer then sought to emphasize three points that have an
important bearing on whether or not socialist goals can be
achieved. First, in South Asia (as elsewhere) activists and
intellectuals find themselves in societies where people have
multiple identities. But these are not just fixed givens.
Rather, what these activists and intellectuals say and do
reinforces the political salience of some identities and weakens
the salience of others. Second, the nature and attitude of the
state remains critical to the success or failure of leftist
social movements. The institutions of the state present social
movements with a ëpolitical opportunity structureí which can
either repress or facilitate their aspirations. And third,
socialists have to consider whether globalisation is creating
the possibility for a ënew unionismí. Just as economic changes
in the late 19th century made possible a more inclusive form of
unionism which included unskilled workers in industrial
countries like Britain, perhaps the economic changes taking
place in the late 20th century make a genuinely international
unionism possible for the first time.
VIII
In the short time remaining of the allocated slot, as is
understandably, yet frustratingly, the case in most conference
discussions, questions and comments were taken from the floor.
Bhagwan Josh said that the situation should not be diagnosed in
terms of Left/Right . "Can there be an agenda of ameliorative
reforms?" Thatís the question, he said, one should ask. In
response, Jairus Banaji stressed that that agenda must be seen
as "the concentrated aspirations of the working classes." For
this historical memory is important and so is the need
to "identify with earlier struggles" in oneís search for
a "rational expression of grievances". Bobby Syed queried Yadav
on his use of an "inherited language" of radicalism that he
otherwise criticised. He also pointed out that a "radical" might
equally well be a ëright-wing radicalí. In response, Yadav
insisted that he had deliberately used the word "radical"
knowing fully well that it can indeed be usurped by the Right
too. Since concepts like "radical" are essentially contested,
when it comes to the ground reality of political activism, the
Left must "grab what is radical" to its advantage.
Yunus Samad and Shinder Thandi emphasized the need to critically
examine the implications of globalisation for South Asia and the
response of the Left to that. In this context, Thandi
highlighted the need to think through the culture of
reservations and quotas. Anthony Copley referred to Pritam
Singhís introductory remarks on poverty in South Asia, to make
the criticism that the panelists had not provided any thoughts
on that important issue. Josh, in agreement with Copley,
expressed his dissatisfaction with the way the panel had gone
about raising the problems that needed to be addressed. Meena
Dhanda sharply disagreed with Joshís dismissive attitude, saying
that it was important to subjectively identify with the Left.
Some of the panelists had tried to think of the future of the
Left in terms of how they as political agents must situate
themselves with respect to the parties of the Left. It was not a
futile question to think about what it means to be on the Left
in the contemporary South Asian context, as Josh seemed to
suggest. For many people, such an identification continues to be
a source of inspiration.
In her own question to the panel, Meena asked Jairus Banaji why
he thought there should be a unified movement of all wage-
earners. If India was indeed a fragmented society, wouldnít it
be more apt to think of the movement for socialism as a
multiplicity of struggles rather than a unified movement? Banaji
clarified that he did not think of unity as something imposed
but as born out of the "self-activity" of people. As of now,
there was no common experience that can ground such a moral
consciousness; what needs to be built is a "culture of
solidarity". He added that we need to compare the Indian
experience in the period 1985-1995 with that of the Brazilian
working class which had achieved such a high level of
solidarity, that a candidate from the engineering workers union
was fielded for the Presidential elections. In India, the
culture of solidarity was "weakly developed" and its importance
was not fully recognised by the Left.
IX
The main purpose of writing this extended report is to continue
the above discussion with a wider audience. Too often invaluable
insights and strongly felt opinions that get expressed in the
open structured environment of a conference get lost or else
straightjacketed when contributors rework their views for
publication as individual papers. A panel discussion must be, in
our view, seen as a collective exercise at thinking through a
set of ideas. It is a polylogue that may be better understood by
carefully taking the further step of situating the different
voices with respect to each other and identifying some of the
underlying themes that motivate the bulk of the forgoing
discussion. There is a danger, we realize, in trying to draw the
discussion together, in that we might end up by suggesting a
pattern where there may be no justification for one. Hence, we
take the step with caution, and hope that the justification for
doing so turns out to be more than merely the exercise of our
authorial privilege.
X
Any attempt to equate what it is to be on the Left with the
subjective consciousness of ëbeing a radicalí is bound to
generate disagreement from a variety of quarters, as was in
evidence in Banajiís and Archerís response to Yadavís views. For
one, such a definition of the Left valorising merely
oppositional consciousness, faces the charge of voluntarism. All
that is wrong with social and political arrangements cannot be
changed simply with the fighting spirit. Secondly, if the
direction of change, specifiable by some objective goal, is not
incorporated within this oppositional consciousness then even as
opposition it remains deficient. It would, therefore, be
necessary to identify an objective content to what makes a
perspective a Left perspective. However, such a content must
be necessarily revisable because we cannot ever fully
comprehend the ramifications of the problems let alone the long-
term consequences of solutions that our necessarily limited
perspective identify. Whatever objectivity there is in the
content of the idea of the Left, it is invariably historically
conditioned.
We think that two values - egalitarianism and democratisation -
should be at the core of a Left perspective. In combination,
they provide us the basis for differentiating the Left from the
Right. A right -wing politics may have a democratic dimension
but it is by definition anti-egalitarian. A political tendency
ceases to be Left, in our view, if it sacrifices the egalitarian
perspective. Waseemís characterisation of Z. A. Bhuttoís PPP as
a Left party that allegedly later ceases to be so under Benazir
Bhutto, can be understood in the light of the change in
commitment to core values. We believe that further thought needs
to go into spelling out the egalitarian perspective. In order to
be a consistent egalitarian, it is not sufficient to be
committed only to intra-generational equity, it is necessary to
also incorporate inter-generational equity in the egalitarian
perspective. One of the most significant contributions of the
environmental movement is to highlight the importance of inter-
generational equity. Similarly, feminism has taught that genuine
respect for the humanity of all has been and continues to be
hindered by chauvinist beliefs, practices and values that
undermine women in multifarious domains. To be a consistent
egalitarian, it is not sufficient to be committed to equity
between men, it is necessary to also incorporate inter-gender
equity in the egalitarian perspective.
The forgoing has important implications for the debate on
technology. Though the Left has always welcomed the advancements
in technology which expand human capabilities and human
enjoyment, the considerations of inter-generational and inter-
gender equity demand that we oppose those kinds of technology
which are known to cause an extensive and irreversible damage to
the material and cultural environment for the future
generations even if such forms of technology add to the welfare
of the present generations. We do not ground this opposition in
terms of some notion of the "idyllic past", but from a through
and through modern perspective. Modernity, for us implies an
open-minded search for new solutions to recalcitrant problems.
New technologies must pass the tests posed by environmentalist
and feminist criticisms, or else they are simply not new enough.
Our search for new solutions might lead us to cast a backwards
glance, for example, in some areas of traditional medicine, or
in some aspects of the organisation of matrilineal societies. It
would be a mistake to confuse this looking back with a rejection
of modernity.
A related issue, that surfaced in the panel discussion and on
which the Left in South Asia needs to critically re-assess some
of its positions, is globalisation. The overwhelming sentiment
on the Left is to see imperialism in globalisation and
therefore ally with forces of national protectionism. Poudyalís
critical comments on IMF-led economic development in Nepal, and
Banajiís and Archerís juxtaposed stand-points on unionism under
globalisation, represent different points on the spectrum of the
Leftís attitudes to globalisation. Undoubtedly, the drive
toward globalisation is led by the strategic objectives of the
MNCs and the inevitable logic of Capital, but this should not be
seen only as a threat in terms of the increase in global
inequalities, which certainly is the outcome of this process.
Globalisation also needs to be seen as opening opportunities for
an international solidarity of the working classes. For the
first time in world history, the material and cultural
foundations for the internationalism of the working class are
being created.
The Left must differentiate its modified opposition to the
process of globalisation from the narrow atavistic opposition of
sections of the Right emanating from the slogans of national
interest. Instead of setting and shaping the agenda for a
forward looking and critical approach toward globalisation, the
Left is too often trailing behind the protectionist Right in
order to seem even more nationalist than the Right. It is
the ëswadeshií Right which eventually is the winner in the
competitive contest for the espousal of ënational interestí
which is played according to the rules set by it. The Left needs
to get out of this trap boldly, energetically and wisely. One
way forward is by strengthening the role and participation of
the working classes, to the extent that it is feasible, in
determining the outcomes of the actual negotiations between MNCs
and the local Capitalists. The bargaining power of the workers
within a particular MNC in South Asia can also be increased by
the solidarity of their co-workers in the country of origin of
that MNC.
XI
Our last concern is with highlighting the difficulty which Left-
wing politics faces in articulating its concerns. It might seem
paradoxical to make such a claim after writing a few thousand
words based on some very lucid statements. However, we submit
that there is a need for a comprehensive language of Left
politics, more than ever before. Yadav expresses his
dissatisfaction with accepted meanings when he tries to redefine
the term ëradicalí. Jodhka questions the salience of class
analysis in the Leftís attempts to come to terms with concerns
of identity. Banaji hints that the aspirations of the working
people must find a "rational expression". In different ways one
can see that the difficulty lies not so much in identifying the
grievances or demands of people but in finding a comprehensive
way of expressing them. That, in our view, is the challenge for
the Left in South Asia.
Multi-Culturalism and the politics of recognition have an
entirely different face in the advanced Capitalist societies of
the West. It is tempting to think that, like in these
societies, the ëcorrectí order of facing the problems is first,
the economic, then the cultural/political. It is not accidental
that the language of Left politics in these societies has been,
until recently, woven around the idiom of class. It would be a
mistake to think that the ëgenuineí grievances and aspirations
of the people that the Left seeks to articulate and fight for in
South Asia must likewise occur in a sequence of stages. It would
be an even greater mistake, based on the fallacious comparison
with vastly different experiences of people elsewhere to think
that our problems can be tackled one by one. (Indeed, we doubt
whether a reductionist approach to political reality is sound
for any society; sooner or later the neglected problem is bound
to surface with an even greater force.) This does not rule out
learning from comparable experiences of working people in other
developing Capitalist societies along with exchanging valuable
lessons within the South Asian context.
We must stress that by a comprehensive language of politics we
mean a mode of expression that is rich enough to voice the
diversity of concerns that motivate people to political action.
Its comprehensiveness does not dictate uniformity of content.
While ëthe politics of ethnicityí might be the problem that
needs expression in Sri Lanka, ëchild-welfareí might be the
concern that the people of Bangladesh seek to voice. We have
suggested above, that a commitment to, both, democratisation and
egalitarianism is necessary to a Left perspective. A
comprehensive language of the politics of the Left must,
therefore, be constituted by the moral grammar of
democratisation and egalitarianism.
Notes
. We wish to thank John Harriss and Iftikhar Malik, who was the general organizer of the BASAS conference at Bath, for their help in organising the panel. With the exception of Yogendra Yadav, all the other panelists made written submissions after the conference which have proved invaluable in the preparation of this report.
. The case for enlarging the culture of respect for human rights has been made by Pritam Singh in ëSectarianism in the Human Rights Discourse : Politics of Human Rights in Post-Colonial Punjabí in Michael Anderson and Sumit Guha (ed.) Changing Concepts of Rights and Justice in South Asia, N. Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1998.
. One could spell out the connection as that the future of the idea depends upon the future of the protagonists of the idea. On this view, whether or not the idea of socialism has a future will depend upon whether or not those who call themselves socialists or "radicals" are able to articulate that idea in a home-grown idiom, assuming, as Yadav does, that the success of the idea requires such an indigenous articulation. For a more detailed discussion of his ideas, see Yogendra Yadav ëFuture of a Pidgin Socialismí, Seminar, No. 407, July 1993, pp. 20-26.
. See Mohammad Waseem Politics and the State in Pakistan, Lahore : Progressive Publications, 1989 and Iftikhar Malik State and Civil Society in Pakistan, London : Macmillan Press, 199, for further information on the politics of the Left in Pakistan.
. This last comment was not made in Banajiís written submission, which has been used for all the quotes above, but is gleaned from Meenaís notes. The quotes on nationalism in the following paragraph are also taken from her notes.
. For an attempt to understand the politics of Punjabi identity, in the context of the ongoing discourse of regional identity in a global perspective, see Pritam Singh and Shinder Thandi (ed.) Punjabi Identity in a Global Context, N. Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1999.
. Robin Archerís Economic Democracy: the Politics of Feasible Socialism, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1995 though using European examples, can provide a comparative outlook on the prospects of unionism in India in the context of globalisation.
. Josh referred to their account of the ideological debates along the Left/Right spectrum in colonial India from 1920-1947 and some of the current ramifications of those debates, in their three-volume study. See Shashi Joshi Struggle for Hegemony in India, Vol. I, N. Delhi : Sage Publications, 1992, Bhagwan Josh Struggle for Hegemony in India, Vol. II, N. Delhi : Sage Publications, 1992, and Shashi Joshi and Bhagwan Josh, Struggle for Hegemony in India, Vol. III, N. Delhi : Sage Publications, 1994.
. See Meena Dhanda ëOpenness, Identity and Acknowledgement of Personsí in Kathleen Lennon and Margaret Whitford (ed.) Knowing the Difference : Feminist Perspectives in Epistemology, London and New York: Routledge, 1994, pp249-264
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