I dont like to identify with one religion, community, nation or ideology. But if I were to describe myself politically I would say Im a Leftist more than anything else. I feel sad to read media reports about the decline or end of the political Left in India. Personally, I am disrespectful of Karl Marx, as I am of most so called great people. He impregnated his maidservant while lecturing the world about exploitation and call me petty if you will but that I think that should spur any human being with a moral fibre to take everything he said with spoonfuls of salt. But he has left us (pun unintended!) with great tools for understanding and reconstructing society. In magazine articles with various self styled Left activists and intellectuals I find that SADLY NONE of them has identified what I see as the root causes of the Left decline --namely, intolerance and hypocrisy. None has paused to see the dialectical method, though effective to a great extent, has most often degenerated into the crudest form of George W Bush style Either/Or thinking not only on all public matter but also on the way party members judge people and deal with them in their day to day life. In Kerala this crudity has breached party walls and penetrated the psyche of a disturbingly large number of people of all backgrounds, affiliations and persuasions. The almost pathological propensity for violence and intolerance is a result of this. Another thing Leftists need to address is the schizophrenia of advocating class struggle on the one hand and enjoying all the benefits of Liberal democracy, including MPs and MLAs salaries and perks on the other. Living in such a contradiction is the other source of perennial frustration and its inevitable concomitant of violence of some kind or the other.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 07:33:12 +0000
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