Ghosts: Open Letter to Sonia Gandhi | Murzban Jal

by Murzban Jal

The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children.  —Henrick Ibsen, Ghosts.

As long as I am Prime Minister I will not allow these communists to dictate our foreign policy.—Manmohan Singh, as quoted in Sanjay Baru, The Accidental Prime Minister. 

Dear Mrs. Gandhi,

I am writing this letter to you because one hears from various quarters that the Congress party, the good old, Grand Old Party of India (GOP,) is suffering from an existential crisis. Yes, there is a crisis—in fact a much larger crisis—that you have just spelt out in your article in The Indian Express, ‘A Virus Rages’ where you talk of “permanent polarization” and “permanent frenzy” unleashed where “the ruling establishment clearly wants the citizens of India to believe that such an environment is in their best interest”. [1] What you have not mentioned is that this frenzy and polarization has completely crippled the Congress party.

While noting that there is a crisis in the Congress party as an alleged party of secularism, one must note that there a much larger crisis hitting India and the whole world—the crisis of morality and reason itself. The questions that arise are: “Why has the Congress not been able to resist and confront the forces of “permanent polarization” and “permanent frenzy”? And why have “permanent polarization” and “permanent frenzy” led the secular forces as well as the nation into a terminal crisis which it would not be able to rise from?”

In this “permanent polarization” and “permanent frenzy” one just hopes that it is not the same type of existential crisis that has hit Russia (and which has already hit India), and hope that the response of the ruling establishment will not be that of the one unleashed by Putin.

The primary nature of this letter is to basically talk of the existential crisis of the GOP, since it is felt by a certain section of the Indian population that the Congress is yet a mass based secular and progressive party that can take on what one may call the “Putinization of India”.

To understand the nature of this existential crisis of the GOP which is clearly showing in all national and state polls, it is better to move from the real world of authoritarianism to the world of existential literature. Let us thus move to Franz Kafka’s principal character Gregor Samsa in his magnum opus The Metamorphosis. In this literary masterpiece, one fine morning (or not so fine, as someone may say), Samsa wakes up only to find that he was no longer a human being, but had become a terrible insect, in fact into what Kafka calls a “monstrous vermin” (ungeheueres Ungeziefer). Now normally in the science of evolution the human would be placed “higher” in the scheme of things than insects. The transformation from human being to insect is a complete impossibility.

Now normally one would refrain from using terms like “vermin” (or for the matter “virus” which you have used in your essay), for these are usually used by right-wing forces, especially against progressive and democratic forces. Recall the Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov at the time of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution calling communism a “malevolent disease”. [2] One is raising this issue of “vermin”, “disease”, etc. because these are basically violent and anti-humanist terms, terms that both the Nazis used against the Jews and all the enemies of fascism and also used by Stalin. One only has to refer to the notorious Stalin book, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Bolsheviks. Short Course, to see how Stalin demonized everyone whom he disliked as the Hostile Other. [3]

Now Kafka in no way can be described as one who can be kept in the notorious company of the Nazis and the Stalinists. When he is saying that Samsa has been transfigured into a terrible insect, he is at the same time saying that all humanity is suffering from this tragic anti-human condition. We all have become “monstrous vermin”. And by this, Kafka means that we have lost our humanity. We are no longer humans.

Thus a clarification is necessary in defense of Kafka. He is not prejudiced like Bulgakov, the Nazis or Stalin. For him:

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back as hard as armour plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slid of completely, could barely cling. His many legs pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes.[Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, trans. Stanley Corngold (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1981), p. 3.]]

And this is precisely what has happened to the Congress party at least since 2014. They went to sleep as human beings and woke up as insects unable to even get up. While, by and large, it is said that yourself and the Gandhi family is responsible for this terrible state of affairs where the Congress has become like Gregor Samsa and where the very laws of evolution are defied in every possible way, this is only a very, very partial truth. There is a larger truth that needs to be said. And to understand this larger truth that would throw light on the terrible state of affairs of the GOP, one firstly has to move to the very first pages of Marx’s Capital, Vol. I when he mentions another form of metamorphosis where human beings are transformed into terrible “things”, namely into commodities. Now as you must be aware that the main characteristic of the commodity is its salable characteristic and it being transformed into money and then into capital. Critics of the GOP would say that the transformation into money is taking place, but not into capital. And sensible critics will also say that commodities cannot fight organized prejudice and malice, “permanent polarization” and “permanent frenzy”.

And looking at both money and capital (especially flowing into elections), it must be stated that human beings are thus no longer human beings (most certainly not citizens of a democratic republic) and the commodification of politics and the financialization of the economy are the main problems for the rise of the ethno-nationalists with their “permanent polarization” and “permanent frenzy” and alongside this the corresponding downfall of the GOP. It thus quite fair to say that both commoditfication and financialization have led to the collapse of the GOP. One consequently says that the disastrous rise of ultra-right ethno-nationalism reminds one of the days in Weimer Germany when the Nazis were on the rise. Should we then learn from the mistakes committed by the democratic forces then, so as not to repeat history once more?

But so you may ask: “What have Kafka and Marx to do with the sad affairs of the GOP that have brought it down to this level where it has seen rout after rout in election after election?” There of course must be something wrong, as we saw in the disastrous moves in Punjab just months before the elections when you shuffled the leadership. The downfall was completely and absolutely imminent at that very time. And here the democratic masses will point the finger of suspicion to you. After all, what was this remote controlling that you were doing from New Delhi? Why if you knew that Captain Amrinder Singh (then then Chief Minister) was incompetent or even flirting with the ultra-right did you continue him for so long (and did not expose him to the public), and why on earth did you bring in an import from the BJP, the ex-comedian and once upon a time cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu, to captain the GOP before the elections? Do you think that Punjab is a joke? And do you think that jokers can be reliable political leaders to fight “permanent polarization” and “permanent frenzy”?

Of course you may say that these were only blunders regarding tactics. But then look at your party policies, their plans, etc, for the present and the future. Does it have a plan for the economy, can you explain how finance capital is dictating affairs in the country and dictating lives of every Indian with respect to economy, education, health, foreign policy, etc, not to forget aiding the rise of the ethno-nationalists? Do you have a concrete plan to counter the rise of the ethno-nationalists and the street smart neo-Nazis who are so voraciously supported by the Media Industry who from once championing cosmetics are spitting communal venom?

And when Nehru is being battered by the ethno-nationalists (for being “feminine”, “weak”, “liberal” and “socialist”) there seems nothing that the GOP is doing to “educate” the people (even in romantic sense) on what liberalism is (or rather “was”) and how Nehru chartered a course that would be (if one may say) “unplugged” from the world of finance capital, unplugged here also in a romantic sense, because for Nehru theory and practice had no need to coincide. For him, there was always a great gap between theory and practice.

Further, there seems nothing from your side on rekindling the romantic memory of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) where India stood with the struggles of the Palestinian people against Zionist occupation and that of the Cuban people bullied by imperialist USA. How this could become public memories you never seem bothered. You have not put in the public space on how “secularism” and “socialism” entered the Indian public discourse and what matters in India is “we the people of India” and not ghosts raised by the neo-Nazi ethno-nationalists.

 And, when you talk of “permanent polarization” and “permanent frenzy” is this only in the abstract or is this to be related to a collapsing capitalist world order and how the GOP intends to deal with the brutal rule of finance capital (which it itself ironically heralded and welcomed in India as state policy in the early 1990s) accompanied by the violence of the ethno-nationalists? Are you only going to talk of “love”, “tolerance”, “peace”, “brotherhood”, etc., but not on late imperialism in terminal and permanent crisis? Are you then going to write a novel titled “Love in the Time of Permanent Cholera?”

And that is why it is necessary to say that the rejuvenation of the Congress will be impossible if it refuses to recognize the role of global finance capitalism with the havoc played by the ethno-nationalists.

Of course you may say that the UPA and the Congress for ten long years in power before the debacle in 2014 had a concrete programme and that MGNREGA and RTE were examples of the social democratic character of the GOP. But what is not being said is that these are (or should we say “were”) welfare measures of the bureaucratic state mechanisms where the state acted as the patron while citizens were converted into mere clients ready to take doles. What must also be said that this role is now taken over from you and that the BJP is acting as the state as patron doling gifts to the citizens now converted into not mere clients, but serfs perpetually chained to the feudal political overlords. Democracy demands active and vibrant citizenship, not “clients” and “beneficiaries”. In this sense, is there any difference between the GOP and the BJP?

Let us thus talk of the “dependents” and those who seek to break economic, social and political serfdom. We thus now go into the question of the “dependents”.

Ambedkar and the Critique of the “Dependents”

And it is in this reflection of patron-client relation, the birth of the “dependents” and the rule of the feudal political overlords, where Ambedkar comes in, especially in his critique of Gandhi and for that matter the entire Congress party. In critiquing the right-wing ethno-nationalists, it is better to seek an altogether different space for a rational and scientific alternative to be possible. This Ambedkar always explored and demanded. For Ambedkar, people are active beings and they need to realize themselves in open, democratic praxis rather than being dependent on the bureaucratic state apparatus. Citizens, for him, cannot be converted into serfs. Citizenship and serfdom are totally two different things.

For him, the main issue is that Indian society at its deepest foundational level is caste society governed by a dictatorial caste oligarchic order and sanctioned by religion with its infinite rituals and that this caste society is governed by the totem of purity and taboo of pollution with its infinite rankings and gradations with complete contempt of the lower order and literal worship for the higher. That this system has also been so deeply internalized and affected by what he once called the “infection of imitation” [4] must be noted. And that this system of ranking has now been mastered by the ethno-nationalists must also be noted.

To put it in simple words, the GOP ignored caste and when it did come up, it romanticized and thus rationalized it. On the other hand, the ethno-nationalists studied this system in detail and transformed it into a racist and fascist system.
So if one talked in the first part of this letter of finance capital, one now brings in the issue of the apartheid caste order because these are both intrinsically bound together, a binding which has now become the soul of the Indian ethno-nationalists. The Congress never paid heed to the overcoming of caste, the ethno-nationalists perfected this system.

You talk of promotion of “prejudice, animosity and vengeance” and the “spread of hatred and divisiveness” by the ethno-nationalists, but you do not even once mention that these are predicated on the caste order. You forget to say that the apartheid caste order with its system of ranking, condemnations and exclusions are the cause of the present politics of hatred. And since you thought that caste system was not something to be critiqued and overcome, disaster was only waiting in the wings. And disaster has indeed come.

Colonialism and the “Dependents”

Besides ignoring caste and capitalism, you also ignore the role of colonialism and how it created a system of dependents to serve global capitalism. Go deeper into this matter, go back to the celebrated days of the anti-British struggle and you will notice that a distinct and different order from the colonial order needed to be created and that the government had to be a people’s government and not the bureaucratic colonial state bequeathed by the British. But then did Nehru and the Congress do anything about it? To be honest Gandhi since his Hind Swaraj had talked of the “satanic” characteristics of western civilization [5] and that the parliament is nothing but a “sterile woman and a prostitute” [6] and an “emblem of slavery” [7].

But if this is the case, then was the Congress honest with Gandhi’s teachings and why did they ignore Gandhi’s critique of western democracy? Why did the Congress (contra-Gandhi’s HindSwaraj) take the colonial state mechanisms lock stock and barrel? After all, is it not the ethno-nationalist who is troubling your conscience who has taken the very same colonial apparatus for his own macabre use?

India needed decolonization. Instead India got a recolonization. And this where one locates the roots of the crisis of the Congress—its inability to break out from the international capitalist order and its insistence to create a political order of dependents, where the Indian state would be dependent on international capitalism and the citizens of India dependent on the Indian state.

Now we all know that the British had from the 18th century converted India into an agrarian colony destroying the Indian economy based on the unity of agriculture and manufacture. It brought in the plagues and famines. But worst of all it created a colonial state that organized the colonization of the economy and the loot emanating thereon. Did Nehru and the Congress do anything about this? The answer is simply no. In no way did he ever try reforming the colonial state apparatus. He only took it for the benefit of the New Elites. One here simply has to forget land reform or anything to do with the National Democratic Revolution where common schooling with free and compulsory education from KG to PG would rule and where nationalization of industry and agricultural collectives would govern modern India.

Was Nehru Ever a “Socialist”?

One usually recalls Nehru as a “socialist”. But please recall his role in the extreme unconstitutional ousting of the communist government in Kerala led by E.M.S. Namboodiripad in 1959 because the Communist Party of India (CPI) began a process of educational reform in Kerala. Why did Nehru who professed so-called “socialist” ideals not support educational reform? Was it proof that even the liberals did not want the feudal status quo touched by democratic reform?

One must recall this in order not to repeat these slanderous mistakes of the past. Recall instead of supporting constitutional reform he aligned with the then deadly triumvirate of Kerala—the Catholic Church, Muslim League and the Nair Service Society and supported the Vimochana Samaran (the so-called “liberation struggle” from communism) and even turned to the USA who put the CIA of the job to unsettle and uproot the CPI from power. [8] It was Indira Gandhi who took on the responsibility of destabilizing the communist government at the behest of Nehru. And it was her husband Feroze Gandhi who told her that “she had joined hands with the “caste monsters” in the state to undo a democratic election. You are bullying the people. You are a fascist”.” [9] Nehru consequently became “a silent participant in the molestation of democracy” [10] and who also had “vast tolerance of pre-capitalist values and institutions in Indian society”. [11]

This is the crux of the problem which now haunts the Congress party. At the very minimum level, feudalism run by the caste oligarchs had to be eliminated. Instead these very same caste oligarchs were cultivated, who eventually would govern India. What Nehru should have done is that he should have cultivated Ambedkar—without doubts the most important democrat that modern India has produced. Ambedkar knew that it was not only the caste oligarch who was governing India, but that caste was (and yet is) the very soul of India (even of modern India). Caste with its macabre system of apartheid-like exploitation would continue to exist even in modern India. Instead of being annihilated, it would be recreated. The very cultural, religious and ideological “space” of India was (and is) caste and its apartheid system of governance. It is the Indian ethno-religious nationalists who understood this and are using this for fascist mobilization. The old caste order created the Untouchables. The ethno-nationalists extended the list of the Untouchables, from Dalits to Muslims, Christians to communists. Now you also have found yourself here in the company of the New Untouchables. What then is the Congress going to do? Will it revolt or simply accept the fascist order of the day?

Please Call a Spade a Spade

But if this is the case why does the Congress not use the “f” word? Why does it not talk of fascism? Why in your article ‘A Virus Rages’ did you not even once refer to fascism? Why did you merely say that “social illiberalism and bigotry, the spread of hatred and divisiveness, shakes the foundations of economic growth”? Why you are obsessed with economic growth and do not say that hatred is not bad as hatred, but that it merely harms “economic growth”? And most of all, why have you reduced politics to mere electoral politics and the parliament? Is not politics also linked to the regime of rights and mass education for social and economic democracy, not to forget on abolishing the class and the caste system?

And that now fascism has taken over the parliamentary system, it is necessary to recall Ambedkar’s prophetic words:

India is negotiating to have parliamentary democracy. There is great need for someone with sufficient courage to tell Indians: “Beware of parliamentary democracy, it is not the best product as it appears to be”. [12]

One also needs to recall that for him:

Democracy is another name for equality. Parliamentary democracy developed a passion for liberty. It never made even a nodding acquaintance with equality. [13]

“So what should the Congress do?” so you may ask. And the answer is that it must reinvent itself as a social democratic party, go directly to the masses and thus explain what real social and economic democracy means. You must go back to the basics. You must reinvent what the “Idea of India” really means, an idea that is free from bigotry, free most of all from hunger and want and freed from the capitalist barons and the caste oligarchs. But would the caste oligarchs in your own party ever allow it?

The problem is that democratic forces have vacated the public space which then has been encroached by our own Putins who imagine that anybody and everybody that they do not like are little Ukrainians that need to be blown out from the planet. Just as Putin has lied to the Russians, our own Putins lie. And they only and solely lie. The problem is that they have now the mass media with them who like Putin fantasize on a “Greater Russia” or the Indian version of it.

But there is a greater problem and that is our Putins along with a large part of the media are amply funded by neoliberal capital that your very own party welcomed in the early 1990s. One must recall that the very first experiment of neoliberal capitalism was in Chile when in 1973 General Pinochet on orders of the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and ran a bloody system of mass murder and terror.

Then will the Congress be able to, at least, understand that there are economic roots for the rout of this GOP and that this needs to be put both before the people of India and in all political forums? Would you be able to confront imperialism from where neoliberal capital flows along with their policies, policy makers and agent provocateurs? This sounds very unlikely, since deep affection for both caste and imperialism runs deep in the veins of the Congress. Besides these two very important factors (caste and neoliberal capitalism)—and here your critics both from within the Congress and from outside critique: namely that the Congress is run like a Private Limited Company.

And it is here that one can understand how the Congress went into terminal decline. And this is because like almost every Private Limited Company it became corrupt and feudal through and through with a comprising character that would bow and ally even to the Indian Putins. Look after all at the “exports” of the Congress Private limited Company. Look at Himata Biswa Sarma (the once upon a time a loyal Congressman and now Chief Minister of Assam and loyalist to the Indian Putins), N. Biren Singh (Chief Minister of Manipur), Prema Khandu, Jyotiraoditya Scindya (you son’s once greatest loyalist), N.D. Tiwari, Vijay Bahugana, R.P.N. Singh, Jitin Prasad, Tom Vadakkan, Shankersinh Vaghela, Narayan Rane, etc. The list is just too long.

And if this is the case, the rot in the Congress party must be much deeper than mere leadership. It is not because so-called “great leaders” like Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad, etc have exited from the scene of history to give rise to exports from the GOP Private Limited Company to Indian-Putin Inc., but it being a reformist character, many a times seeming to be a pale imitation of the BJP which has led to the rot.

This is because the Congress from its very inception of the (imagined struggle) against British colonialism was reformist through and through. And it is this reformist character that always brings itself into a compromising position, completely unable to take on the ethno-nationalists. Nowherein the world have reformists ever fought fascism.

The Ridicules State of Affairs

And it is this reformist character that so repelled Subash Chandra Bose and Ambedkar. In 1930 Bose as leader of the left-wing of the Congress proposed “setting up a parallel Government in the country” to organize workers, peasants and youth against the British Empire [14]. “This resolution”, as he went on, “was defeated”. [15] For him, “no plan was laid down for reaching this goal [16].” Bose concluded: “A more ridiculous state of affairs could not be imagined”. [17] And it is this ridiculous state of affairs which was exploited by the Brits and now which is being exploited by the ethno-nationalists. The castles built by the ethno-nationalists are built on the ridiculous state of affairs heralded by the Congress. What we now find is that the ethno-nationalist is in the ridiculous castle sitting with a crown on his even more ridiculous ethno-nationalist head. The Congress built the foundations; the ethno-nationalist erected his castle on it crowning himself as “permanent emperor” of “permanent polarization and frenzy”.

And this is because the deepest roots of the Congress lay in its reformist and comprador character such that it could never plan an authentic independence movement against British colonialism based on mass democracy and instead, as Ambedkar noted, where the Congress were seen merely wanting Dominion Status within the British Empire. [18] This is the crux of the problem, a problem that Perry Anderson keeps central to his The India Ideology, a crux that Ambedkar locates as central to the Congress and that is dependence to colonialism and imperialism:

But unfortunately Gandhiji very soon went back upon his words and (1) while in jail he told the British journalist Mr. Slocombe that by complete independence he meant only the substance of independence, (2) besides, when he was released on expressing his inclination for compromise he devised the illusory term “Purna Swaraj” in place of complete independence and openly declared that in “Purna Swaraj” there was no place for severance of the British connection, (3) by making a secret pact with Lord Irwin he definitely adopted the ideal of Dominion Status under the British crown. [19]

Consequently the help that Nehru took of the CIA to oust the communist government in Kerala and the welcoming of neoliberalism in India under the stewardship of Manmohan Singh, the connection to the empire of capital remains. Ambedkar, as we just saw, said that for Gandhi and the Congress “the ideal of Dominion Status under the British crown” was their main ideal.

And if the ideal for the Congress was to stay under the British Empire, the internal ideal was to stay with the caste oligarchs, the landlords and the moneylenders. Thus:

In establishing their supremacy they have taken the aid of “big business” and money magnates. For the first time in our country money is taking the field as an organized power. The question (that one needs to pose is): Who shall rule—wealth or man? Which shall lead money or intellect? Who shall fill public stations, educated and patriotic free men or the feudal serfs of corporate capital? [20]

It is this term “feudal serfs of corporate capital” that Ambedkar raises which is of utmost importance. The Congress’ role as Ambedkar prophesized was at best that of the feudal serfs of capital. They of course tried their best to be masters, but always and permanently serfs they were. And that is why when imperialist USA wanted Manmohan Singh to sign on the nuclear deal; it was he who spat venom on the communists. The venom hit the communists who left the UPA. The Congress thought that they would merrily sail on. But down their ship went. And down and down it goes.

Ghosts

But if this is the case, then how can any possible rejuvenation of the GOP be possible? How can Gregor Samsa be human again? Will our Indian Samsas free themselves from the sins of the past, or would it let these sins devour them?

It was Hegel who had said that philosophy is the child of its own time and it was Nietzsche who had said that one must die at the right time. But then would the GOP be at all (even remotely) be interested in philosophy? Would Kafka, Ambedkar, Hegel and Nietzsche ever interest them? Will the GOP understand that in certain deaths, there are also the possibilities of resurrection where the masses rise up against totalitarian dictators, and thus it is necessary to die for this resurrection to take place? 

In contrast to this necessary death and the corresponding resurrection, Ambedkar in his very first work Castes in India talked of a terrible ghost that haunts India—the ghost of the “law-giver of India” (Manu)—and the need to exorcise this awful ghost [21] and in his Annihilation of Caste said that one must stop worshiping the past and that the past cannot supply ideals to present society. [22] Unfortunately this ghost of the past was never exorcised by the Congress and the monster-caste was never annihilated. Gandhi and Nehru romanticized the past. The Indian Putins have made it their official policy.

Meanwhile Kafka’s terrible insect possessed by the ghosts of the past marches on. This time it has throw off its Gandhi cap and is wearing jackboots looking for Indian Ukrainians to massacre.

The question is: “Mrs. Gandhi what are you then going to do?”