In Response to Sunil Ray’s A Cry For Humanity and the 2024 Bengal Uprising | Pradip Kumar Nath & Hemprabha Chauhan

A Cry For Humanity and the 2024 Bengal Uprising by Sunil Ray Published in this esteemed journal (Saturday 14 September 2024) - is a reminder of the lost ground in the collective amnesia that a new generation of academicians flourishing in this country and rightly dubbed as “GODI ACADEMICS”, have let loose a kind of narrative – that is aptly described as “anti-intellectual”.

“Fascist politics seeks to undermine public discourse by attacking and devaluing education, expertise, and language. Intelligent debate is impossible without an education with access to different perspectives, a respect for expertise when one’s own knowledge gives out, and a rich enough language to precisely describe reality. When education, expertise, and linguistic distinctions are undermined, there remains only power and tribal identity.” (Stanley, 2012, p - 36)

Dr. Sunil has rightly analysed the issue in sharp contrast to the “GODI analysts” making attempts to churn out “desi stuffs” with the tadka of typical mythicization about the mismatch in investigations, gaps in security-governance in a public institution (with it’s historicity as the first private institution imparting medical education in Asia), and the opportunistic adversary mudslinging which has been the ideological plank of the fascist regime at the centre.

Many write-ups including the one by the first citizen of this country with the rhetoric “enough is enough” (published in almost all English newspapers worth the name and in at least two vernacular print dailies across different states) in the aftermath of the barbaric killing of a woman doctor and in R. G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, opens up nakedly the textbook explanations of Jason Stanley in his book “How Fascism works”. (Stanley, 2018).

‘If the demagogue is the father of the nation, then any threat to patriarchal manhood and the traditional family undermines the fascist vision of strength. These threats include the crimes of rape and assault, as well as so-called sexual deviance. The politics of sexual anxiety is particularly effective when traditional male roles, such as that of family provider, are already under threat by economic forces. (Stanley, 2018, p-127)

The latest incidence of Bharatpur in Odisha (on 15th September night) is a continuity in that sequel of the incidence of 3rd June 1980 when the 23 year old Chhabiranee was gangraped for dare-devil reporting by his journalist husband Naba Mahapatra. The wounds of the river Biluakhai (the witness of the brutal rape and murder of October 1980) had never dried up before the high profile gangrape of Anjana Mishra on 09th Jan, 1999 (again during the 3rd term of the Pattnaik dynasty’s congress rule in Odisha – the first being in his first term) literally shook Odisha resulting in the ouster of the then CM and installation of a Tribal as CM).

When Dr. Sunil talks about the hegemonic control, it encompasses the global order of “Rape as a weapon of war” solidified in the era of globalisation (post 1991) and these localised incidence of Chabiranee, Anjana Mishra, RG Kar incidence or the innumerable such wounds from Kathua to Hathras cannot be isolated in analytics’ myopia of the anti-intellectual stance of isolationism without the attempt for the “Concrete Analysis of the Concrete Conditions”. This intellectual dwarfism expressed through “debates on a slippery slope” have been the regular practice of the narrative let loose by mainstream media, more specifically the primetime telecast, which has by sheer chance been the recipe of the petite bourgeoisie, the newly created class and caste with a fixed income from pension and rent seeking pursuits. This class is the real culprit having enjoyed the privileges of Nehruvian Liberal democracy and education and at present garrotting the collective conscience of “HUMANITARISM”. They are duly named and shamed as the RWA UNKIL by the high spirited young Ravish Kumar, the new generation representative of voice of the people. (Kumar. 2018, p - 42)

The textbook dictum of MARSHALL McCLUHAN “Medium is the Message” is best manifested in the attempt to strangulate the voices of the u-tubers that is the new-generation social media. The massive control of this medium has been witnessed from Latin American controls to internet shut down for years in Kashmir valley and Ladakh.

The inventive Hindu Fascist weapon of “splitting and dividing all things as a means of control” (McLuhan,1994, p-1), do not allow a cohesive logical thinking which very succinctly Dr. Sunil attempted in the aforementioned write-up, which demands special attention of the intelligentsia and researchers. Dr Sunil very aptly guides the reader to look the present crisis through the lens of present time and not through the spectral weaponry of yesteryears. This dynamic analysis can afford to shed new lights on the challenges of new governance structure and their plausible ramifications.

References:

1.Bhuta, A. (2018). Book review: The free voice: On democracy, culture and the nation by Ravish Kumar. LSE Review of Books.

2. Kum?ra, R., Padmanabhan, C., Basnet, A., & Singh, R. (2019). The free voice: On democracy, culture and the nation. (No Title).

3. McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding media: The extensions of man. MIT press.

4.Stanley, J. (2018). How fascism works: The politics of us and them. Random House.

(Authors: Pradip Kumar Nath – is from Odisha Administrative Service (1991 batch) and has been a faculty of NIRDPR since 2008. He is attached to MoRD, Govt of India and also the Country Head of the Project on DRR.; Mrs Hemprabha Chauhan is an ex-staff of PTI and has been a Guest faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication, New Delhi)