Tribute to K.N. Raj

TRIBUTE

[ Professor Kakkadan Nandanath Raj, a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Delhi, who founded the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) in Thiruvananthapuram and was its Honorary Emeritus Fellow, breathed his last in Thiruvananthapuram on February 10. As a token of our tribute to his abiding memory, we reproduce here his contribution by way of an intervention at a discussion in Thiruvananthapuram (December 8, 1998)—it was carried in the Mainstream Annual Number 1998 (December 26, 1998). S.C. ]

Has Communism a Future?

by K.N. Raj

This discussion has been organized here in Thiruvananthapuram on the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto. The Communist Manifesto was published in February 1848, and therefore—strictly speaking—the 150th anniversary should have been commemorated in February 1998. Ten months have slipped by since then and, if we allow another two months to slip by, the opportunity will be altogether lost. Of course, the subject chosen for discussion will continue to be relevant, and of wide interest, for many more years to come. Still it is appropriate that it takes place before the year 1998 is over.

From the two persons who came and invited me to speak on this occasion, I gathered (what I had already suspected) that Mohit Sen was the moving spirit behind it. I was not surprised by this information, as Moht is now one of the very few Marxists who have had adequate training in the literature on the ideas and events associated with Marxist thought. The rest of the so-called “Communist (Marxists)” are, by large, familiar with only some slogans that have gained wide popularity among them as they march in numerous protest demonstrations. Mohit was not only trained in history in the University of Cambridge but, like the older generation of Communists in this country such as S.A. Dange and Mohan Kumaramangalam, is well-versed in traditional Marxist literature.

When I first came to know Mohit personally nearly five decades ago, he was also a fairly dogmatic member of the Communist Party of India—at any rate, that is honestly what I recall of him—when I was working as a professional economist in the Planning Commission of India immediately after it was first constituted in March 1950. I am open to correction and shall gladly tender my apologies if I have unwittingly misinterpreted his ideological position at that time. My memory has been seriously damaged by an attack of cerebral thrombosis I suffered a little over ten years ago; but such damage affects usually my ability to recall correctly the events that took place about a decade or so before this attack (and not the events of a much earlier past). In any case, what I wish to draw attention to is that Mohit Sen’s ideological position has changed so radically over the last three or four decades that there is hardly any point in focusing attention on his earlier position. As editor of a weekly journal launched by him, the name he gave to it—New Thinking Communist—reflects adequately his present approach to communism, essentially a critical approach to all that goes by that evocative title. It is in a similar vein that I too shall elaborate today on the question that has been posed before us: “Has Communism a Future?”

Communism—in the form it presented itself from 1918 in what later came to be known as the Soviet Union, and more recently in China from 1949—was essentially an ad hoc political and economic system in these two countries that had remained backward in almost every field, except in the literary and (more broadly) cultural fields. India’s claim to some distinction in the global arena has been also based primarily on contributions to the literary and cultural fields—though, fortunately, it has not had to share the same fate as the Soviet Union or China. For Communist/Marist parties to gain political power at the State level (as they have gained in Kerala and West Bengal—not to mention in a few limited areas elsewhere in the country) is not the same thing as capturing power at the national level through the Central Government. Indeed such limited capture of power, through the political opportunities and rights recognised in our democratic construction, have helped the Communist/Marxist parties to make very valuable contributions, more specifically in the spheres of land reform, and rapid extension of primary and elementary education to even distant rural areas (as in Kerala), and to a lesser extent in West Bengal.

Of course, the offer of such political opportunities and rights through India’s democratic Constitution does not compel any individual, social movement or political party to make use of them—as everything short of individual suicide or murder (not to mention mass suicides and mass murder) is permitted by the Indian Constitution according to the choice of individuals or social groups. Hence indeed the dismal state of literacy and health care in the States of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh [which are often referred to collectively as the ‘BIMARU’ region (of India that is Bharat!)]. By virtue of its having the majority of the country’s population, we are now also ruled by the most illiterate and unenlightened sections of this population represented by the Bharatiya Janata Party and by a Prime Minister who proclaims his origin through his name—Atal Behari Vajpayee!

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To return to the main question that has been posed for discussion—“Has Communism a future?”—the answer, it seems to me, is almost certainly: “None whatever”. Marx was a sensitive man, who was quite disgusted with capitalism as it was developing in various countries in Western and Central Europe in the nineteenth century; and he had certainly very good intellectual and moral reasons for allowing that sense of disgust to develop into pure hatred of that system. After all, it is precisely such a feeling and revulsion we all experience as we go out of Kerala and get a taste of the rest of the country—even in relatively developed States like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, not to mention the tiny State of Delhi—with all their slums, the perpetual sight of children seeking alms to support their younger brothers and sisters (or their parents broken physically and mentally by the extreme poverty they have had to endure), and the pathetic look in the face of millions of poor villagers wherever we go.

Any sensible person will understand that what is required, above all, to help them is not another political revolution that would almost certainly destroy whatever economic and social institutions are there to provide some minimal support to them, but some strictly practical solutions for strengthening and improving such institutions, within the existing environment. After all, we cannot remain as innocently “revolutionary” as the Leninists and Maoists were in earlier phases of the twentieth century; even the so-called Naxalities in India—a large number of them at any rate—appear to be having second thoughts in the light of their actual experience, in some of the regions of India where poor people are living under conditions of extreme poverty and social tyranny.

What is needed instead are sensitive political and social leaders, whose idealism and deep concern for the poor do not lead them to abandon their practical commonsense but instead drive them to find feasible solutions—initially to at least ameliorate and, in the course of time, to resolve effectively the problems of extreme poverty and deprivation in the manner we have done in Kerala. No one should under-rate Kerala’s achievements in the course of the last four decades—as I have found many “progressive” friends in New Delhi are tempted to do in the overall gloom they allow themselves to be stifled by. For it is when they fall prey to such temptation that the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Senites, the Bajrang Dals and the rest of these despicable political reactionaries come forth with their phoney solutions in the name of the greater glory of ancient and medieval Hinduism!!!

The only serious suggestion I would like to offer to Mohit Sen is that he should change the title of the weekly he edits—from New Thinking Communist to New Thinking Socialist. Communism is, in my view, a totally unrealisable and altogether too romantic an ideal. By projecting communism as the ultimate objective of human society all over the world, Karl Marx was—and quite unintentionally—revealing his ethnic origin in Judaism, and the goal that religious faith had set in terms of a perfect society. Neither religion nor ideology can take human beings very much closer to such a visionary state of perfection. Both religion and ideology can help to some extent—if visualised with adequate realism—to take humanity forward to a more satisfying state than now. Anything far more perfect is just plain romanticism, reflecting, in fact, a frailty of the intellect.

All this is not to deny that capitalism—more specifically, global capitalism—is likely to lead to disaster for everyone if the United States, seriously drunk (as it is) with economic and political power, attempts to dominate this “one world” of ours through all the international institutions at its command (including the agencies of the United Nations). That would indeed be a very ironic way of “eliminating” capitalism—for, apart from its being so unnecessary capitalism has within it much to offer that we would all welcome, particularly if tempered by some notions associated now with political liberalism and socialism.

May I also add a few lines from one of the sayings of Gautama Buddha—the relevance of which to the subject of my lecture should be obvious:

Believe nothing

Merely because you have been told it

Or because it is traditional

Or because you yourself have imagined it.

Do not believe what your teacher

teaches you merely out of respect

for the teacher

But whatever after due examination and analysis

you find it conducive to the good,

the benefit,

the well being of all things,

that doctrine believe and cling to and take it as your guide.

—Buddha (third century BC)