Betrayal of Malayali Muslims

 My first encounter with communalism was after the demolition of the Babri Mosque. The stories I was hearing was how my relatives or Malayali Hindus in general who resided in Kasaragod (northern Kerala) but worked in Mangaluru, Karnataka (adjacent region) would stay back in Mangaluru if it was late. They had to move from a Muslim majority part of Kasaragod and the fear psychosis was too high. I heard the story of my relative, a communist party worker, being hacked to death in a Muslim majority area in Kasaragod. I also heard from my relatives that the Muslims indulging in violence in that region were the ones who had migrated to Mumbai and moved back after facing Hindu communal frenzy in the aftermath of Babri Mosque demolition. Then there were tit-for-tat murders of some of the most vulnerable. Compared to the left dominated Kerala region, the Hindutva dominated Karnataka region where I lived was relatively calm. This I felt was a real irony.

The dominant ethos of Keralan society has always been Leftwing ideology. This ideology has consistently opposed the Hindutva movement in general and the Babri Mosque demolition in particular. There have been multiple clashes between the Left and the RSS (the Hindutva movement) which left scores dead. So, in a nutshell Muslims had no business to create any nuisance in Kerala.

One may argue, it was a minority but that's where the betrayal becomes apparent. The Hindutva party, BJP, could never get any seat( a situation hasn't changed much even today though its vote share has increased considerably). However, the Muslim majority district of Malappuram always elected the candidates from the Muslim League. For a long time, the MP from the district was not even a Malayali Muslim. Basically, Malayali Muslims when they could elect a candidate on their own they chose a communal party. This despite the fact that all other parties would have chosen a Muslim candidate. How is this different from communal Hindus voting for the BJP? To make the matters worse, this had been happening long before the BJP was even a potent political power. 

The Muslim League is supposedly moderate. But one could take the similar line with communal Hindus too. Compared to Muslims, Hindus in general are a more open society with girls having relatively better freedom. There is not much difference between secular Hindus and communal Hindus in this case. What should worry all of us, is the identity based politics of both the Muslim League and the BJP. Majority Malayali Muslims haven't acquitted themselves admirably in this case.

After the Babri Mosque demolition, there was a flurry of Muslim fundamentalist parties in Kerala (the menace of which has spread to Karnataka too). One can argue, that was a direct response to Hindutva communalism as all regions of India are so closely integrated. But it's still a betrayal of Keralan ethos. More than that it's a mockery Kerala mainstream culture. Do those bigots think such blatant communalism in a region known for its hardcore leftist movement will not be observed people in other regions of India, who would then draw their own conclusions? 

This betrayal can't be undone unless every Muslim identity party whether moderate or extreme ceases to operate in Kerala.

Communism and Kerala - VII_a

Now another party, AAP, has banned FDI in retail. As I've already discussed, commerce is one area where the casteist stranglehold is showing no letup. Small scale trading is the least ethical sector where tax evasion is rampant. So, it's a glorious mixture of casteism and corruption.

AAP might get a strong backing from merchant castes for their anti-FDI stance but the communists are losers in every sense. 

Communism and Kerala - VII

Casteism is kept alive not only by the caste specific marriages but also by immanence of the castes brought up in the occupational caste world view. Just as a person shouldn't want to continue his traditional manual scavenging job, it is equally important that a person because of his Brahmin background shouldn't want to become a priest, scholar or teacher (overlooking the narrowness of that idea in the past) . So any direct or indirect methods to break this uni-dimensional thought process should be welcomed.

It is with this background I find the communists' opposition to FDI in retail sector disappointing. Unfortunately, Indian communists never made an attempt to apply the communist ideas based on the class based European society to the caste based Indian society.

Their love for small scale retailers who I would think never would vote or fund communist parties defies the logic. This is the place where they need to stand by the ideology (that is they want to eradicate caste ideas of traditional occupations). Shouldn't be difficult for them to make this paradigm shift as they appear to have forsaken some of their economic ideas.

I had come across opinions that the cultural revolution in China, even though harmed a countless number of people, was also responsible for a new and liberated way of thinking. I would think these kind of reforms, though hardly of the scope and the scale of the cultural revolution, that could bring down the existing artifacts because of the caste system are always welcome. I'm sure everyone would bounce back from any setbacks because of the reforms as they already have "cultural capital" unlike the  huge chunk of faceless population.

Communism and Kerala - VI

I'm reading George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I have finished around 150 pages and I find it difficult to read further. The initial excitement at his description of a totalitarian system has been vaporized by a  colligated romantic story.

It could be said that even in his imagination of a totalitarian society he had been helped by the existing systems elsewhere and had taken it to the logical conclusion. However, it was his female characters that one would feel a total letdown.

I'm not mixing my thoughts here. A totalitarian society is created by a collection of people. Females are individuals. One can stereotype a totalitarian society and still get it right because it is not  individualistic. However, a person's experience of females cannot be stereotyped because at  the end of the day he's dealing with any female as an individual. Here I found Orwell had caricatured females.

Both Katherine and Julia are stereotyped females. One has obedience in her bones; the other has rebellion. I get the feeling that neither of them grew into their selves with some kind of irrational or rational logic. They just happened to be like that. On the other hand, Winston is trying to piece together the situation rationally.

He pities himself for his physical limitations. However, the character is confident of its intellectual capabilities. Altogether, I get an impression of an intelligent rational with masochistic tendencies. That makes neither of the females as his equals. It's beyond comprehension how self pity reduces Winston to Julia's equal. George Orwell could be limited in his imagination of a rational woman.

However, that is not the reason I started writing this entry. I wanted to discuss 'newspeak' that he describes. Newspeak is a short hand language with no antonyms and no words for many concepts which are deemed anti-establishment. It's a way to make people think in a very restricted way thus eliminating any thoughts of rebellion from their mind. Eliminate the words that articulate the opposition to the establishment thus eliminate the opposition itself.

Anyway, many Indians can intuitively identify 'newspeak' with 'castespeak'. The Indian languages were/are vehicles of castiest and slavish mentality. However, somehow communism in Kerala has been able to turn Malayalam, the worst castespeak, as a revolutionary tongue. It has achieved it by bringing Sanskritized Malayalam to common people.

My Malayalam(the Kasaragod variant) has a very limited number of Sanskrit words (probably the percentage of Prakrit words could be higher). At family level conversation this has  been sufficient as far as I could see. I find it difficult to follow Sanskritized Malayalam of my relatives (with humble background). Sometimes I find it difficult to believe they can utter those words with a straight face. I'm fairly aware of many Sanskrit words, since I studied in Kannada medium. Still I find it difficult to follow some of the known words used by native Malayalis. Probably because they take some of the obscure meanings (or the meanings which aren't dominant in Kannada literature). In any case, if I use some "grand" Sanskrit words while speaking in Kannada, I could become a laughing stock."Sakhav" (comrade in Malayalam) type of words can only be used in Yakshagana in Karnataka. I feel Malayalis are immune to such thinking.

Sometime back I mentioned about a study that found that among the students completing their primary education, Kerala students had the best grasp of Malayalam, whereas, Kannada and Tamil students had the least of their mother-tongues. I wonder whether the communist movement enabled common people to get used to a vast vocabulary in Sanskrit to express many concepts which in turn helped their children to grasp the language better. The school books would invariably use Sanskrit words in vernacular languages to express many concepts.

Communism and Kerala - V

The biggest drawback of communism is that when it helps working class people to become middle class it loses its ideological foundation. Or in an actual situation when feudal slaves become independent and start moving up the ladder, then the subsequent generations don't have any affiliations to the communist ideology. Realistically, the success of non-communist countries in the world as thriving, egalitarian nations with open societies make communism almost irrelevant. But this is the reality of communism as an economic model. How about the social model?

If we observe non-communist countries that became successful, they already had liberated serfs and opened the door of universal education centuries ago. Almost all of them were homogenous societies with respect to language and religion. Autocratic communist nations tried to promote a common language but for few feeble attempts never really tried to eliminate the religions.

 In Indian context, the communists didn't face linguistic divisions as they ruled linguistically homogenous Kerala and West Bengal. However, the divisions because of caste and religion were always there and never blurred and always remained mainstream.

Unlike poverty and discrimination, the effect of religion or caste is not perpetual for a big chunk of population. Even though, the caste system was responsible for perpetual misery to a great number of population,  those caste ideals have been made illegal. However, the remaining aspects of the caste system or all aspects of religion are perpetually repressing for individuals. But these individuals are never organized and in many cases (eg. women) are unsure of social security -that these organized groups offer- if they dessent. In the case of communities too the differences in identities would lead to catastrophe in the form of communal or caste violence. However, even these do not happen regularly, and don't touch the elite classes in most cases, thus a movement against religious or caste divisions is never possible.

With this background, I believe theoretically the communists of Kerala should disband themselves. Now their existence in Kerala society owe much to the communal and caste divisions than to their ideological positions. This is rather a disgraceful situation. Since they have already made efforts to bring market  economy to the state, it no longer makes sense that they should  remain in the politics as these could be also done by other parties. They don't have any differentiators now. Even though, their ideology has elements that can bring societal change, I don't think they will get any support from the castes or the religionists if they make that as a poll plank. Corruption becoming an agenda of a single party is dangerous to the country as it diminishes the scrutiny against other parties.

Communism and Kerala -iv

I start this post with an assumption that China is going to be the most successful nation in the years to come. They may or may not remain communist country but the foundation laid by the present communist regime will take it to glorious future. My three reasons for this assumption are;
1. Individual
With a single kid family I don't see any family failing perpetually
2. Communal
With 92% population adhering to a single ethnic identity (Han) there could be very few reasons for ethnic conflicts. Also limited influence of divisive religions (if practiced by significant sections of population) like Islam, Christianity, Hindutva together with the lack of stagnating philosophy like the caste system  are big plus points. I don't see Atheists, Buddhists and Taoists fighting each other violently.
3. Security
The conflicts with minorities in fact are advantageous to Chinese military. The weak but simmering opposition would keep Chinese military sharp and in practice without exactly wearing them down.

However, Fred Weston at 'International Marxist Tendency' believes China for the first time in history has created Marx's true urban workers and it'll herald true Marxist revolution. But I don't think it'll change much. As I said before fundamental drive for a Marxist revolution is the alienation of urban worker and not the economic disparity. At any case, all these urban workers might strive for living standards of upper classes and not really pull it down to socialist stagnation. The socialism or communism can only succeed when every urban worker discovers his/her alienation and able to articulate it.




Via Leherensuge


But is there a parallel to bureaucracy led capitalism of China in Kerala? To my surprise, there certainly some kind of micro revolution is taking place in Kerala. Since  Kerala's communists cannot form dictatorial government to create a bureaucratic  capitalism, they have created their own venture capitalism in the state thro' their party organization. 


CPI(Marxist) is one of the biggest venture capitalists in the state with interests in media and tourism. They do understand as Soviets and Chinese before them that they need to create jobs. However, I'm not sure if they could be as successful as China. The scope of all those projects appear to be very limited. Also, I wonder if these ventures are 'collective'? Do all CPI(M) members hold the stake in them? Do they get dividends in profits? At least, in China this part is supposedly secret and nobody know their actual stakes. I'm not sure if this is the case with CPI(M) owned ventures too.

Communism and Kerala -iii

My reading tells me, the Marxist-Leninist socioeconomic model of a society was Feudalism-> Capitalism-> Socialism-> Communism. Here the former two were realities and the latter two were dreams. The socioeconomic model that I have dealt with till now envisages a society's transition from feudalism to capitalism and then to welfarism. But I do not consider this a standard model for every society. In fact, a tribal society that had self transformed itself to sedentary civilization may not exhibit this. Feudalism which requires slave or bonded labourers may have many reasons for its origins. The point I want to discuss here is Kerala's socioeconomic transition model.

Kerala might have experienced a different sequence in the formation of its society. This model probably is restricted to Malabar (North Kerala) along with Tulu region.

Though there are evidences that Dravidian tribes in Central India moved to sedentary life and started occupying all of South India for almost 3000-3500 BP, it should be said that bourgeois life was crystallized in  East India long before South. In fact, the earliest Prakrit speakers who moved to South were most likely artisans and merchants (or after nomadic herders of North).

The Malayalis even though ruled by Tamil kings for a long time were most likely in tribal stage. However, since both Kerala and Tulu region had a maritime trade life, they attracted various guilds to that region as back as 2000 years ago. Considering the fact that there was a caste of ship builders (called Odiyon, subcaste of carpentars), we can argue they had an active maritime trade.

If one considers the North Kerala, the earliest extant ballads (Vadakkan Pattugal, Songs from the North) then one can observe the transition from a Bourgeois society to Feudal society. The earliest available work, Payyannur Pattu, is completely devoted to merchants (I suppose true in the case of Tamil region too). Curiously, merchants are the city[1] chieftains. There is absolutely no mention of any castes in Kerala society of that period. However, the later Vadakkan Pattugal(Aromal and Unniyarcha or Taccholi Udenan) give a picture of feudal Malayali society.

Because of the above factors I would consider the first transition that Kerala society experienced was from tribalism->capitalism. But soon both Tulu and Kerala society turned into feudal societies (Tulu earlier). The reason I believe was because of the stagnant knowledge[2] of ship builders. This caste could no longer match the advanced ships of Arabs and later Europeans.

In my opinion, the transition of Malayali society has been: Tribalism -> Capitalism -> Feudalism -> Socialism(present).

Notes:
[1] The term for city, 'Nagara', was associated with aristan or merchant guilds. Wherever these guilds established themselves they called that place 'Nagara'. Similar to word 'bourgeoisie' even these guild people were known as 'city dwellers'. In fact, a Tamil merchant caste is called just that, Nagarattar, city dweller or bourgeoisie.

[2] Primitiveness of skill was common across all occupations castes. I suppose the knowledge stagnation caused by the caste system was responsible for keeping all the artisans and other occupational groups in South to their primitive techniques for a very long time. However, their northern counterparts were somewhat liberated from this fate because of repeated attacks from outside the subcontinent which brought in new ideas.

Communism and Kerala -ii

My previous post discussed how true Marxist philosophy, which at the core envisaged a class struggle by urban workers against the bourgeoisie, never really materialized. As Maju pointed out wherever it had succeeded (Russia and China) the class struggle was against the feudal system.

When Karl Marx had come up with his theories, his reference society was a bourgeois society. His society had already moved from the feudal economy (which was broken by the bourgeoisie) to the capitalist economy. His theories, though not intended, became successful in feudal societies. Kerala was not different in this respect.

However, it's tough to call this as a success of Marxist ideology. First of all, his(Marx's) fundamental theory about 'alienation' has no meaning in these societies. A peasant or an independent artisan (who still would form the bulk of these societies) weren't the true alienated people. The movement that happened had Marxism in name but not in essence. Therefore, we must conclude that the communist movements in any feudal societies were devoid of any ideology. But that stand needs to be corrected after 'Maoism'.

 Mao Ze Dong, in fact , gave clear ideological base for a communist revolution in the feudal societies. In this ideology cadres are peasants and not urban workers. Therefore, alienation is irrelevant. It's also called 'Agrarian Sociology'. Even though Maoism is probably the much later ideology, we can extrapolate it to Indian communist movements and consider Indian communists of Kerala and Bengal were following the ideology of Mao. I suppose, main communist party of India which calls itself Communist Party of India (Marxist), should rename itself to Communist Party of India (Maoist). The ideology that best describes it is Maoist and not Marxist.

Now, this also explains why a Marxist economy failed absolutely in Mao's China or Kerala and West Bengal. The creation of new economy in Marxist sociology was based on a worker who felt alienation in a Capitalist society. However, psychology of feudal society people is entirely different. The socialist economy model is not for these people. Now, it also explains the post-Mao China. We need to bear in mind that Marx's reference society had moved from feudalism to capitalism. This gives us clue for the natural course a society should take. One should bring down a feudal society and then create a capitalist society in its place. China is exactly moving towards Marx's reference society. Since Marx's reference society mostly moved from  capitalist to socialist-capitalist (centrist...capitalism with insurance and social security) economy instead of pure socialist economy and this would probably be the case with China too. Urban worker would probably remain alienated as long as he has leisure to think about it.

Now, there is another movement in India which though calls itself Maoist is nothing but that in its orientation and essence. The Naxal cadres are mostly tribals. Now, the tribal life is entirely different from a civilized human life centred around labour. Also, tribals don't live in feudal society but a free society of their own. Their problem is that they are exploited by non-tribals. But there is no ideology that defines their movement. It's totally chaotic. The scope of the movement has nothing to do with true aspirations of people it represents. And I'm sure their economic model would be catastrophic.

But does that mean the state need to help creating a feudal society among these tribals hoping that they would someday bring it down and create a capitalist society and then move to a centrist society?

Communism and Kerala -i

Maju told me Communism succeeded in regions where aristocracy and the serf system were still prevalent (both in Russia and China). There were no noticeable middle (Bourgeois) class and hardly true urban workers. In Western Europe where peasants became free and workers remunerated well, Communism didn't make much impact. I thought this was exactly the situation in Kerala and West Bengal too.

As far as I know Communism is revolt by proletarians (urban workers) against the bourgeoisie (business men). We should note that both Kerala and West Bengal never had socially influential bourgeois class (The class created form merchant and artisan guilds during medieval Europe) as both these castes were either numerically negligible and low in their caste position. I believe when Communism was first conceived in Europe, bourgeois class had become educated. However, this was not the case in Kerala (I'll leave West Bengal as I don't understand much of its "scribe" dominated feudal system.)

It is said that Communism though failed in the economic prosperity of the region, developed an egalitarian society in Kerala (Just like in Eastern Europe and China). However, if we compare the neighbouring state Karnataka, the socialist dominated political parties have managed the land reforms(a major catalyst for an egalitarian society). However, Karnataka lags behind Kerala in terms of literacy. Where Kerala's literacy rate is above 90%, Karnataka is still struggling with 65-70% literacy rate. But that doesn't give the true picture. Tulu region of Karnataka has similar social indices as Kerala. Also, communist ruled West Bengal lags behind Kerala at 70% literacy. So, the common factor for Kerala and Tulu Nadu's high literacy rate appears to be the matrilineal system. Open attitude towards girls' education probably was a major catalyst for this development.

Then we talk about other systems like healthcare, everything is comparable to Tulu region. And Tulu region even moved from centre to right in its political orientation where as Kerala has always remained centre-left. So, I don't think any credit could be given to Communism for social development too. A comparison with Tulu region which shares similar cultural motifs with Kerala gives a true influence of Communism.

At the end of the day, communism only appears to give irrelevant intellectual aura to this region. However, its supposedly main beneficiaries, the working class people have been generally dubbed as "kings at home and slaves abroad". It appears keeping them poor and equal hasn't improved their self respect.

To be fair to Communism, it gave real aspiration to people to come out of their slavery. However, as a movement for workers its abilities were limited and becomes irrelevant over time with more worker friendly policies. As western European nations have shown this could be done even without a communist government. China probably has understood Communism's role mainly as removing social hierarchies and isn't applying the ideology to other domains of social development.