Kolkata MUST rise

Kolkata MUST rise
ND Batra

Ashok Malik’s “A Place Time Forgot” (TOI) is an intriguing commentary on what Jyoti Basu and CPM did or failed to do in West Bengal during the three long decades of complete sway on political power in the state.

Interestingly, his commentary builds upon what historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee wrote in the Telegraph (“Minds in thrall”), explaining the compelling historical circumstances and the powerful influence of men like Rajani Palme Dutt in the “conversion” of privileged young Bengalis like Jyoti Basu and others to communism.

Between the two commentaries, however, there is an intellectual gap, which puzzles me. For example, what kind of political apparatus and propaganda methods CPM used to keep the otherwise intense and individualistic Bengali mind enthralled for so long? How did “a closing of the Bengali mind” occur?

For more than a decade I wrote a weekly column for a Kolkata newspaper and I used to receive lot of e-mail messages from readers. One of my readers describing CPM’s political method of command and control used the expression “goon-o-cracy.” Is this the same as “cadre-cracy”? Why did the news media and the academia succumb to CPM’s influence? What was CPM’s meta-narrative or state fantasy that captured the minds of the people?

What a historical coincident! In 1977 when Jyoti Basu became the chief minister of West Bengal, Deng Xiapeng had ushered in the “Beijing Spring.” Consolidating his political control over China, Deng started gradually opening up the country to marketplace economy and foreign direct investment.

In 1979 Deng visited the United States and China never looked back. Instead of making frequent visits to London, Jyoti Basu should have come to New York. Johnny Walker depressed him, perhaps; California wines would have uplifted his spirits and done some good for West Bengal.

Kolkata and West Bengal are too important to be consigned to the dust bin of history or the catacomb of time past. Thanks to India’s dynamic federalism and diversity, some states like Karnataka, Gujarat and Maharashtra have followed different models and have very done well. Gujarat, for example, has been growing at more than 11.5 percent during the past five years. In spite of Ahmedabad 2002, Gujarat is a very cheerful place to live and work. I know because I lived and worked there before I moved to the US. Open markets create open minds. And that’s how the Bengali mind would liberate itself from the tyranny of the past three decades.

A different kind of renaissance would begin, one based on information technology.

Jyoti Basu like Vladimir Lenin will be forgotten.In India’s best national interest,

Kolkata MUST rise and shine and compete with Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. It is not a pipe dream; it is an economic and political necessity for India’s “look-east” policy.

Unbowed and unafraid

Unbowed and unafraid
ND Batra
18 January 2010
From The Statesman

The biggest challenge to China’s one-party authoritarian rule comes not from its peripheral regions, Tibet or Xingjian-Uygur, but from its heartland, writes ND BATRALIKE Chinese dissident and democracy advocate Liu Xiabao who, on Christmas Day, was jailed for 11 years for “incitement to subvert state power”, many Chinese intellectuals must wonder, perhaps like TS Eliot’s J Alfred Prufrock, “Do I dare… Do I dare disturb the universe?” Most would rather make money than risk their lives for political freedom.

But those who dare must keep in mind that whoever disturbs social harmony and the peaceful rise of China’s becoming a dominant global super power with his seditious and insidious ideas must be silenced. China has little tolerance for the noise and chaos of democracy. Last year, human rights activist and environmentalist Hu Jia was sent to prison for three-and-a-half years for his subversive writing. In 2005, another writer, Shi Tao, was convicted and sentenced to a 10-year jail term for leaking a Communist Party internal memo to an outside non-Chinese website. And foreigners must behave if they want to do business with China, or borrow from its trillion-dollar kitty, or want to use its diplomatic leverage with North Korea and Iran, or plan to do something about global climate. China can do all this and much more.

In fact, whatever China does or does not do at home or abroad impacts the rest of the world. Many countries in Asia and Africa envy China and would like to emulate its freedom-neutral, export-based model of rapid economic growth.But in spite of this, China is terribly afraid of upsetting its delicate applecart, afraid of the power of ideas of men like Liu, who refuse to bend and bow before the might of the one-party authoritarian rule. It has been much easier for China to condemn the Dalai Lama, a “splitter” of the motherland and a “devil in a monk’s robe”; but is undecided on what to do with Liu who, at the time of 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, was a visiting scholar at Columbia University but returned post-haste to China to participate in the protest, for which he had to spend 20 months in prison.

While the rest of China has been going from economic peak to economic peak to dazzling Olympian heights, it must be puzzling for Beijing to understand why the 54-year-old Liu still talks of human rights and democracy. For his persistent writing about socio-political conditions in China and his contribution to Charter 08, Liu was held in custody for more than a year before a formal indictment.

Charter 08 asks for fundamental rights, the rights to which people in Europe, the USA, India and other liberal democracies have become so accustomed to that they seem so natural, including, for example, separation of legislative, judicial and executive power, legislative democracy, an independent judiciary, freedom to assemble and form groups, freedom of expression and religion, civic education, protection of private property and, most of all, a federated republic. Ten thousand Chinese who are reported to have signed the document since its inception on 18 December 2008 form only the tip of the iceberg.

In December 2009, Liu was subjected to a hasty trial from which not only his wife was excluded but also the news media. Liu, who has received international accolades for his fearless human rights advocacy, will not be allowed to write anything during his prison term because under current Chinese law he will lose all his political rights.International protests do not matter to Chinese authorities, who are determined to maintain their hold on power in the name of social harmony and economic growth. Since Liu’s arrest in early January last year, several organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, Poets, Essayists and Novelists as well as many prominent writers (Salman Rushdie among them) and Nobel laureates have appealed to Chinese President Hu Jintao, but to no avail.

Even President Barak Obama raised the issue during his meeting with President Hu Jintao in Beijing last year. But having declined to meet with the Dalai Lama, Obama’s commitment to human rights in China seems rather dubious in comparison with his predecessor, George W Bush’s call for democracy and human rights.Secretary of state Hillary Clinton, thanks to her new found political pragmatism, seldom talks about Chinese human rights, though as First Lady, when she visited Beijing in 1995 to attend the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, she forthrightly told her Chinese audience, “Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organise and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments.” Liu Xiabao and the Charter 08 signatories are asking for the same thing; and they won’t go away.

The biggest challenge to China’s one-party authoritarian rule comes not from its peripheral regions, Tibet or Xingjian-Uygur, but from its heartland, from people like Liu Xiabao.

(The writer teaches communication, media law and diplomacy at Norwich University. He is also author of Digital Freedom and is working on a new book, This is the American Way)