KARAT'S SUICIDE MODE: RSS APPROVES

We have to sympathise with Communist hardliner Prakash Karat. He is unable to decide whether Enemy No. 1 is the BJP or Sitaram Yachury. In public he said it was the BJP. In action he moved against Yachury's line of electoral understanding with other parties including the Congress. His stand was such a boost to RSS-BJP that their party organ wrote an editorial saying Karat was "right". That's a testimonial no other communist leader has got from Hindutva circles. Harkishen Singh Surjeet who spent a lifetime bringing differing opinions together must have turned over and over again in his grave.

It is not difficult to see that Karat took his inspiration from Pinarayi Vijayan, the Marxist ruler of Kerala and, as such, the principal bread-winner of the CPM today. For Pinarayi an anti-Congress stand makes local sense because the Congress is his Enemy No. 1 in Kerala. But India is different from Kerala. Pinarayi is shrewed and cunning enough to cultivate the BJP Prime Minister and to leave Kerala's Congress corruption kings undisturbed despite his pre-election threats to punish them. Such a pragmatist could not be unaware of the need to sup with the devil to win the battle against Enemy No. 1.

Karat's (and Pinarayi's) opposition to electoral deals is questionable in doctrinaire terms as well. Puritans talk of vulgar Marxism which is defined as "a variety of economic determinism with the alleged determination of the ideological superstructure by the economic infrastructure". (Marxists are unbeatable in the pyrotechnics of language). But there is inherent hypocrisy in their accepting the parliamentary system. Honest communism swears by revolution, and revolution alone. Participation in parliamentary activities creates, according to the purists, "parliamentary illusions among the masses" leading them to believe that changes can be brought about through means other than "the struggle to replace bourgeois democracy with socialist democracy".

Karat has accepted bourgeois democracy. Otherwise he would be with the Naxalites. He and his party have been participating in electoral politics. He even accepted the idea of alliances with other parties -- all of them bourgeois of course -- in order to fight elections. He and his CPM were part of the 12-party alliance that put Manmohan Singh's UPA Government in power in 2004. (Four years later he led the Left Front out of it).

Once you accept electoral politics, you have to accept its logic. And there is only one purpose around which that logic revolves: Winning. Karat contradicts himself when he enters muddy waters and insists that his shirt should stay stainless. Such insistence can come only from a mind that is already stained.

Democracy can of course be debunked as a system because it puts the corrupt and the criminal in power. There is a German-American economist, Hans-Hermann Hoppe who is described as "a paleolibertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher". According to him "prime ministers and presidents are selected for their proven efficiency as morally uninhabited demagogues. Thus, democracy virtually assures that only bad and dangerous men will ever rise to the top of government".

Many of us might say Amen to that. Karat is free to do so and stay away from the game of demagogues. But the CPM is an active player in the game. It is in power in Kerala triumphantly and in Tripura shakingly. It is fighting elections and it wants to win. It does form alliances. In Kerala and Tripura, the CPM is in alliance with other parties. The BJP, too, is in alliance with others where it rules. Stalin collaborated with the UK-US to defeat the common enemy, Hitler.

In today's situation, a sort of two-party system dominates India. It is the BJP versus others. This is the result of the BJP being the only party that seeks a communally polarised India based on an extremist Hindutva ideology. The dangerous implications of this surfaced as soon as the BJP assumed power in Delhi in 2004; violent groups appeared across the country lynching and whipping and humiliating handpicked victims while the Government looked the other way.

It was to save India from a Pakistan-like fundamentalist religiosity that politicians raised the slogan of uniting against the BJP. That such unity can indeed save India was proved in the recent Gujarat elections. If Sharad Pawar's NCP had not split votes, the BJP would have been defeated in its home state. In the coming elections, too, if votes are not frittered away, the BJP will be defeated. That is why Prakash Karat's dogmatic position is not just foolish; it is suicidal.

NEW KERALA MODEL? NO HARM HOPING

Something extraordinary happened in Kerala last week. It is a state that was taken over quite some time ago by time-servers in public life, corruption kings and one-man parties with names that incorporate the leader's own name (Kerala Congress-M, for K.M.Mani, Kerala Congress-B, for Balakrishna Pillai). As for Communism, Kerala remains the last lingering toe-hold although the kind of communism on display might confuse even Deng Hsiaoping.

Such a twisted political landscape was suddenly enlivened by a first-in-the-world idea that could well prove contagious. "Loka Kerala Sabha" brought on one platform the Kerala diaspora that famously covers all nooks and corners of the world (and of the Moon, they say). When it was announced, the idea attracted scepticism. It was expected to be no more than a get-together of wealthy Malayalees in the Gulf with the state's politicians and officials. But the bulk of the delegates turned out to be scientists and scholars, barrier-breaking doctors, innovators, institution-builders and academics. Notable among them was an illiterate labourer whose incredible sufferings in the Gulf deserts under cruel employers had inspired the most celebrated novel in Malayalam in recent years.

Not that such facts softened the cynicism of critics. Who can blame them? The gap between promises and achievements had been wide irrespective of which party and which leader was in power. The Loka Sabha saw a hundred ideas coming up, all of them imaginative and practical. Even if ten of them are implemented, the state would set a model to the rest of the country. Wisps of hope rose from the fact that the Loka Sabha idea came from Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan who therefore has a stake in its success. He is also known as the strongest leader the CPM has had.

Will that bring results? He has given the right signals. He publicly accepted many of the suggestions that came up and pledged follow-up action. As the first step towards getting things done, he said a separate secretariat would be set up to oversee the Loka Sabha's proposals, with separate commissions to work out the details. He gave the impression that he had the will to do it. He certainly has the power.

If doubts still persist, it must be attributed to Kerala's history of obstructionist politics. Even Indira Gandhi was more circumspect about projecting her dynasty than the aforesaid K.M. Mani and Balakrishna Pillai are in getting their sons crowned. Highly controversial Congress Minister T.M.Jacob's inexperienced son became a minister only because he was his father's son. A son like Sachin Pilot gets public acceptance because of his ability, but a daughter like Padmaja is spurned by voters because her sole "qualification" is being former strongman K.Karunakaran's daughter.

The farcical depth to which dynasticism has fallen in Kerala is exemplified by the leader of the SNDP, the social organisation meant to project the ideals of the revered Narayana Guru. Vellapalli, a wealthy toddy businessman, turned SNDP into his personal vehicle. Floating a political outfit with the mouthful name Bharath Dharma Jana Sena, he projected his son as a minister candidate. They joined the BJP-led NDA, but no breadcrumbs came their way. So they quit the NDA and the son, without any sense of shame, said his outfit would collaborate with any party for power. There are no takers yet.

Political clowns flourish when values have no role. Few parties suffered more than the Congress because of the loss of values. From Karunakaran's time the Congress had become a time-serving organisation. A.K.Antony flaunted high values but, as Chief Minister and later as Defence Minister, became a meaningless leader because he would take no decision lest his personal reputation for purity be spoiled. Oommen Chandy defined governance by the number of people who crowded around him at any given moment. All this when the Congress has several leaders respected by the people for their integrity. Neither they nor the very capable young leaders waiting in the wings are allowed to come up.

Leaders past the use-by date, selfish family patriarchs, blatant opportunists of power-at-any-cost parties like Sharad Pawar's NCP, all add up to a circus where the communists look at least like a disciplined party. Except that the bourgeois communism of the CPM is poles apart from the relatively proletarian communism of the CPI. In this atmosphere the realisation of any of the Loka Kerala Sabha's ideas would be a miracle. If Pinarayi Vijayan proves that he is also a miracle man, the story of Kerala might open a whole new chapter.

DIVIDED PEOPLE ARE EASY TARGETS

Way back in 1857 a foreign journalist described India in words that seem eerily relevant today. (That is going a really long way back because 1857 was the year Indian soldiers rebelled against their British overlords in what came to be known, in Indian terms, as the first war of independence and, in British terms, as the Sepoy Mutiny. This was the showdown that led to the formal end of the Mughal Empire and the formal start of the British Empire, the Crown taking over officially from the East India Company).

In November of that year an American editor named Charles Creighton Hazewell published an article titled British India in The Atlantic Monthly. His thesis was that the cultural divisions within India were so sharp and extreme that a foreign power found it easy to take control. A lengthy quote is justified:

"In one respect the Indian Empire of England resembles the Roman Empire. The latter comprised many and widely different countries and races, and so it is with the former. We are so accustomed to speak of India as if it constituted one country, and was inhabited by a homogenous people, that it is difficult to understand that not even in Europe are nations to be found more unlike to one another than in British India. In Hindostan and the Deccan there are ten different civilised nations, resembling each other no more than Danes resemble Italians or Spaniards Poles. They differ in moral, physical and intellectual conditions -- in modes of thought and in modes of life. This is one of the chief causes of England's supremacy, just as similar state of things not only promoted the conquests of Rome but facilitated her rule after they had been made. The Emperors ruled over Syrians, Greeks, Egyptians and other eastern peoples with ease because [these peoples] had little in common and could not combine against their conquerors".

Not that Hazewell had discovered something new. Conquerors exploiting Indian disunity is a well-recorded story. Robert Clive won the crucial Battle of Plassey only because he could get the Bengal commander-in-chief Mir Jaffer to betray his Nawab. Nevertheless every recording of the story is a reminder of how we make ourselves easy to be dominated.

When the Roman Empire collapsed, the eastern half centred around Constantinople lasted several centuries longer than the western half headquartered in Italy. Presumably the notion of the "Orient" provided a cultural connect of some sort. The British empire in India failed when, apart from war and politics, "the ten different civilised nations" Hazewell saw in India became one nation under Mahatma Gandhi. The might and political cunning of Britain could not match the unity of India.

That unity disappeared with Gandhi. Politicians of a different type took over the country and private interests gained precedence over public good. The ten different nations of the past multiplied into a hundred narrow ideologies trying to control India. What was benign in the past became malignant under the impact of modern political manipulations.

Linguistic emotions were the first to fan the flames of internal antagonisms. The languages actually gained nothing apart from decorative embellishments such as "classical status". But as a political tool, it became potent in the hands of localised power-seekers. An ironic extreme of sorts was reached when the Telugu state, for which the original linguistic martyr Potti Sreeramulu sacrificed himself, was further split into two Telugu states. Today Telangana fights Andhra, Maharashtra fights Karnataka, Karnataka fights Tamil Nadu, Tamil Nadu fights Kerala and Kerala fights Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over water.

Linguistic antagonisms have since been overtaken by sharper, more dangerous communal enmities. Muslim extremists fight Hindu extremists and vice versa, Christian evangelists fight Christian establishmentarians, and Dalit Mayawati threatens to convert to Buddhism "with my crores of followers". On the sidelines, Kadva and Leuva Patels fight Kachia and Anjana Patels, Kapus fight Naidus, Bhumihars fight Rajputs, Vanniyars fight Nadars, Jacobites fight Orthodox, and Jats fight everybody. The Roman and British empires were simple garden-variety exercises compared to today's Indian Empire controlled by vicious religious hatreds.

The Brits and Romans took advantage of existing divisions. We created new and lethal divisions. The Westerners saw the differences among Indians but were too uninformed to notice the unifying bonds that were there -- such as the principles of sanatana dharma and the traditions of tolerance. Today we have lost those bonds and become victims of selfish parties that seek to divide and rule. Perhaps 1857 wasn't all that bad.

PRINCES IN POLITICS? (NOT PATIALA)

There's something about royalty that excites the popular mind. Thailand's Bhumipol Adulyadej reigned from 1946 to 2016 to become the world's longest reigning monarch; he was so popular that when he died, Thais wept. Japan's ruling Emperor Akihito, the 125th in history's longest royal line (beginning from 660 BCE), has got permission from Parliament to abdicate by 2020 because, at 83, he says he is too old. Britain's Queen Elizabeth is 91 and there isn't a beep from Buckingham Palace about her being too old.

In Thailand and Japan, the monarchy is spectacularly a-political. In Britain, too, the royals have no role in policy decisions. Yet, the British royal family could well become a tactical card in politics if a snap election is held as is likely. The Labour Party, according to current gossip, may take a stand against the heir apparent, Prince Charles, and propose that Charle's son William be declared the next in line.

That will of course be a break in convention in convention-loving Britain. But it will win considerable backing from the common man because Charles is widely disliked. Bhumipol's son Vajralongkorn, the current King of Thailand, is also disliked. But that won't touch him. Thai Kings are seldom seen in public, their movements are unknown, there is no public reporting of their activities and there is a tradition of lese-majeste which makes any kind of irreverence against the monarch a punishable offence.

In the free-for-all system of British democracy, taking potshots at Charles is a parlour game. And he is a favourite target primarily because of his affair with the grand-motherly Camilla before and during his marriage with the beautiful and widely admired Princess Diana. After Diana's death (in a road accident that continues to raise scary interpretations), Charles married his mistress, giving his unpopularity a universal dimension.

Elizabeth's own air of detachment at the time of Princess Diana's funeral had attracted criticism. But she has managed to rise above controversies by her queenly demeanour and her sense of decorum. With the eccentric and embarrassingly undiplomatic Prince Philip as husband, it is no mean achievement for Queen Elizabeth to have retained the dignity of the British throne all these years. No one knows whether her own opinion is in favour of her son or grandson succeeding her. But the politicians would like to make it a topic of public debate, knowing that grandson William will influence voters while son Charles will drive them away.

How grand and unchallenged, by comparison, was the era of royal princes in India. There were 565 of them, the British massaging their ego in ways that ranged from graded gun salutes to titular classification into Rajas and Maharajas. Some of the rulers were sophisticates, some crude. Many were adorned by necklaces of gold, diamonds and pearls, some led ascetic lives. Maharaja Jai Singh of Alwar felt insulted when the Rolls Royce company in London took him for a common Indian and made fun of him. He took revenge by using half a dozen Rolls Royce cars to transport his city's waste. The Wadiyars of Mysore faced financial problems after the abolition of privy purse, but popular regard for them continued.

The wealthiest of them all was also the messiest. The Nizam of Hyderabad was considered the richest man in the world. But where all his money has gone remains a mystery. What is known is that a day before India's military action against Hyderabad in 1948 (following the Nizam's refusal to join India), one million pounds were transferred to a British bank. That money is claimed by India, Pakistan and the Nizam's heirs -- which means the British can go on profiting from the money.

But of course no one was more glamorous, more legendary than the Maharaja of Patiala, Bhupinder Singh GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, GBE. He got Cartier of Paris to turn a trunkful of diamonds and other precious gems into a necklace, the Patiala Necklace, costing $ 25 million in those days. (The Patiala Peg is a measure of largeness by which bars across India honour the Maharaja). A 1400-piece dinner set made of gold and silver, 40 plus Rolls Royces, 88 children from five formal wives, a personal harem of 350 women, a whole chicken at formal dinners followed by two whole chickens after the guests had left, Bhupinder Singh finally died of boredom.

Decadent days? Sure. But preferable to the days when people are lynched to death in public and the killers are hailed as patriots.

INTO A MIXED-UP, CONVOLUTED 2018

Machimanda Deviah caught the spirit of our times when he posted: The black buck who was driving Salman Khan's car had killed Arushi Talwar because she did 2G scam which jumped to death from the Adarsh building. He might have added that Adarsh, caught in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter killing, was arrested for not linking his Aadhar to the Vyapan scam whose GST was stolen by Lalu Prasad's fodder fiddlers who ate 1000-rupee notes.

We live in a convoluted, topsy-turvy India where good is the same as evil and tricolour patriotism is anti-national. Things are so mixed up that we have no idea whether the year beginning tomorrow will be any better than the one dying today. No new year in recent memory is as worrisome as this one. We do not know what's the right thing to do and the wrong thing to say. We are at the mercy of the moment. And the moment is dominated by a new variety of violence that bears the stamp of approval and therefore brings no retribution.

The civilisational values traditionally attached to India, values of co-existence and tolerance, are occasionally asserted by a brave heart here and a defiant spirit there. Sometimes it is done for private satisfaction, sometimes to set a public example. Carnatic musician T.M.Krishna, a brahminic dissenter who questions brahminic presumptions, sang Tamil sufi songs in Mumbai's historic Afghan church, ending the concert with an invocation to Allah. The fringe was angry, but the church was full.

At the other end of the spectrum, Christmas this year found a whole lot of patriots in a frenzy. In Rajasthan they disrupted a function that was held with police permission. In Aligarh Christian schools were warned not to have any celebration. In Madhya Pradesh carol singers were charged by the Government with outraging the religious feelings of people.

All this was no doubt on the assumption that Christmas means Christianity. That is a myth today. Christmas means commerce around the world. Marketing geniuses have developed a whole lot of ideas to bamboozle people of all faiths in the name of Christmas and New Year. Gift giving is at the centre of this trade. Christmas cakes, Christmas cookies, Christmas costumes, Christmas cocktails -- these are what constitute Christmas today. Jesus Christ is in the picture, if at all, only as an absentee salesman.


Delve deeper and you will see how all-consuming has been the power of the marketing. Santa Clause, the big Christmas attraction, was a gimmick developed by Cocacola in the 1920s. Christmas cards, a million-dollar industry today, came out of a scribbled greeting an Englishman named Sir Henry Cole sent to some of his friends in 1843.

To see the irrelevance of Jesus Christ in all this, we only have to see the way Christmas is celebrated. Christmas trees, snow, reindeer and other aspects of European winter are associated with a birth in a Palestinian town known for heat and sand storms. Jesus Christ was a brown-skinned Asian. But the photo-representations of him present a fair-skinned, cat-eyed blonde from somewhere in Scandinavia. The fringe in India is the only group that has failed to see the disconnect between Christianity and Christmas.

They should learn from the Chinese. The Communist Party issued an official directive to its Youth League early in December not to participate in Christmas-related celebrations because "the youth must be role models in abiding to the faith of communism". That's at the ideological level. At the practical level, China is the world's biggest manufacturer and exporter of Christmas goodies -- from artificial Christmas trees to fancy lighting. In Chinese cities Christmas is the biggest shopping season. They even organise special events -- and yes, carol parties -- to attract people to departments stores and shopping malls. A dozen churches in Beijing hold special music programmes attended by music lovers of all religions. The Chinese are a practical people. They do not let ideology interfere with their national economy.

India presents an odd-man-out profile with an intolerant religious creed at the government level. This changes the world's view of us. I write this from Bangkok. A headline in the first Western newspaper I saw here was: "Is India's growing hardline nationalism giving Hindu majority a licence to kill?" The world does not like what it sees in India. People's netas such as Sakshi Maharaj and Ananth Kumar Hegde can of course tell the world to mind its own business. Will that help us mind our business more productively?