maoists' brahmanic nationalism

some notes on the maoists:

a kind of meta theme that runs through the narratives of most varieties of brahmin/indian left, including the maoists, is annoyance with the market, which is understandable. they don't like capital either, which is also understandable. but it is the market which infuriates them more.. because they don't like anything other than caste, which means the janeudharis themselves, mediating social relations.
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how different is the cpi ml (maoist)'s version of the indian nation from that of the congress, bjp and cpm/cpi? not very different, in fact, it should be seen as a more aggressive supporter of indian nationalism than those other political formations, for many reasons. though it speaks of unequivocal support for 'oppressed nationalities' like kashmir, north east etc., it has never shown any active interest in strengthening those struggles beyond expressing occasional verbal solidarity. and it has never ever looked at exploring the existence of other subjugated nationalities within the indian 'nation'.. it has in fact always nurtured the dream of a strong centre that would ride over 'regional' sovereignties, along the lines of the soviet union.. for instance, the bjp passed a resolution in support of a separate telangana state in 1998, the congress formed a separate telangana legislators forum in 2000 with the blessings of sonia gandhi.. the cpi ml (maoist) toed their line completely and took an active part in the agitation, sharing many fora with congress and sangh members. indian/brahmanic nationalism forms the default ideological framework of the cpi ml (maoist), despite all their talk of resistance and liberation.
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telangana's population is around 2-2.5 crores less than tamil nadu's, but it produces more foodgrains than the latter.. in 1948 or so, the literacy rate in telangana was around 4-6% (around 1/3rd to 1/4th of national average) at best, now it is touching 70%, nearly, meaning the spread of education in the region has been much faster than in even kerala..aren't these two indicators enough to debunk the theory of underdevelopment? so why did the cpi ml (maoist) so strongly support the so-called telangana movement? because it is driven by the interests of strong dominant caste interest groups, across the country, who believe in the theory of 'smaller states, faster development' (as propagated by the parivar) which actually means 'weaker states, strong centre'?
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the maoists say indian society has a 'semi-colonial, semi-feudal' character.. look at the first part - 'semi-colonial'. what does it mean? it could mean the indian state doesn't command full political sovereignty and is influenced by an external superior political power.. this could be said about western europe too.. or does 'semi-colonial' mean india is plundered by foreign capital, backed by said 'external superior power', for rampant loot of its natural resources like oil, various minerals etc..? hmm.. there is some export of resources from india, but overall, it's a net importer of minerals from outside, perhaps.. in fact, if the same kind of loose terminology were to be used to describe india's oil trade relationship with the middle east and even russia, you could say india itself acts as a kind of colonial power sucking up precious natural wealth those exporting countries could very well use for their own development. this exploitative colonising nature of the indian state is most evident in its mining operations in the african continent.. so what is the point of using this ambiguous term - 'semi-colonial' to describe indian society's character? dr ambedkar had said the indian masses needed to fight both 'brahmanism and capitalism'.. that makes more sense to the dalitbahujans at large. what does 'semi-colonial' mean, dear ganapathy & co? what are you trying to hide? aren't you trying to erase the brahminical character of india's ruling classes? obfuscate the glaring fact that india itself is a vast empire, a collection of colonies held together and exploited by a brahminized collective of upper castes led by brahmins?
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the maoists identify india as a 'semi-feudal' society (apart from being 'semi-colonial'). this is another vague term that conveys no comprehensible picture of indian society.. the indian state recognizes no landed nobility now, formally, nor does it endorse any form of unpaid extraction of labour, formally. but there are still many instances of bonded labour in several pockets of the country, but these practices do not form the dominant mode of agricultural production in rural india. what characterizes indian agriculture overwhelmingly, across all regions, is stagnation. stagnation in productivity over a long period of nearly half a century. one major marker of this is: in the forty five years since 1970, while total foodgrain production in india grew by 2.3 times, or doubled, the number of people involved in agriculture (cultivators plus labourers) grew by 2.1 times, or also doubled.. india must be the only country in the world where the number of people involved in agriculture actually doubled.. it's doubtful this happened anywhere else in the world, on such a scale, at any point of time, in the last two hundred years, or in the entire modern era.. this almost zero increase in productivity per capita naturally means not zero but negative growth in real incomes of the producers..so why are they still engaged in agriculture, and not just engaged but also dragging in every new generation into it, as if ordered by manu ? this is a new kind of social enslavement that can't be conveyed through such woefully inadequate terms as 'feudalism' or 'semi-feudalism'.. this serfdom of nearly 200 million peasants (and their families) has no parallel whatsoever in world history. have the maoists really, truly studied this?
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the cpi ml (maoist) says in its statements, more than once, that the struggles of the 'oppressed nationalities' such as the kashmiris and the various north eastern peoples should be 'supported unequivocally'.. when was the last time you saw them organize a 'national bandh' in support of kashmir or the northeast? what do their overground support organizations do to spread the idea of freedom for these 'oppressed nationalities' in the so-called mainland? very little - or nothing, among students, peasants or other working classes.. all that they do is to prop up a handful of high profile brahmin-savarna activists as the 'saviours' of these peoples. this actually goes on to reinforce the role of the brahmanic, imperial ruling class these activists come from as the only possible 'saviours', among the masses across india.
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the cpi ml (maoist) calls india a 'prison-house of nationalities'. no, it doesn't define 'nationalities'. nor does it explain why it considers india a 'nation' when it thinks it's a 'prison-house of nationalities'.. it shirks away from looking at the ethnic, linguistic or caste-religious roots of these nationalities which are imprisoned within india.. it looks at them only through the prism of 'development' - some are more developed, some are underdeveloped, according to it. no, it doesn't define 'development' either. there is less malnutrition in kerala, and more literacy, than in haryana, which has much higher per capita incomes. so which state is developed, and which underdeveloped? how does the cpi ml (maoist) understand these differences? or has it outsourced its brains to the various brahmanic institutions such as the planning commission or the nac or jnu or csds or csss or various other brahmanic ideological apparatuses just as the congress/bjp/cpm/cpi do? does it consider these differences as mere 'regional differences' just as those 'national' parties do? do they have anything more to add to that bare explanation? does it look at the strength of brahmanic hegemony in both states, and try to understand the history of anti-caste struggles, or lack of struggles, in those states to understand their role in their differing trajectories of evolution? how does it justify the grouping together of these two peoples in one 'nation'? the other brahmanic parties do it without any reflection, the maoists don't seem any different.
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the maoists never named the reddies, kammas, brahmins, rajus, velamas as the communities which hold excess land in the telugu speaking regions because all of their leadership also came/comes from those communities...this resulted in sustenance of disunity among the majority, the oppressed communities, who did not understand clearly who the 'class enemy' was..not just was/is the maoists' marxism very woolly-headed, even the terms they used/use to define classes in india (borrowed from 19th century europe) were/are meaningless.. they're just another face of brahmin imperialism..
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now, will the maoists in maharashtra, name the marathas, brahmins, kayasths etc as those who control maharashtra's land and political economy, reigning over nearly 400 other dalit, backward and tribal communities, if they're half as serious as they claim to be..? and also show filthy rich people like kobad ghandy the way out if they want to even appear serious..and also distance themselves from various casteist brahmin patwardhans etc who make all their efforts seem very, very farcical.
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one clear sign that the maoists do not want any land redistribution is that they never ever made any strong case for a caste census in india, which could have led to the development of a real, meaningful socio-economic profile of india.. in fact, most of their overground activism has been against any such caste-based analysis and policy. how can you trust their sincerity towards land reforms, when they have never bothered to find out who exactly owns excess land in all states? and whose excess land are they going to redistribute if they want the owners' social profile to remain hidden?

kerala: how caste surpassed class

by the time the land reform movement in kerala was finally translated into state policy, it had actually become a moment of 'caste surpassing class' and not vice versa. it was a movement when the most politically active jati group among the bahujans, especially sections of the ezhavas, forged a tentative alliance with the erstwhile landholding upper castes.. kerala history after that moment should perhaps be seen as a chronicle of the fortunes of this alliance as more space was negotiated, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, from the upper castes by this emerging dominant group, through time.. so what the policy achieved was actually only a formalization of of transfer of titles to peasants from this group who were already tilling the particular holdings as tenants.. land reforms across india have followed a similar pattern..they have always been transfer of full rights to a few jatis who were engaged as tenants earlier, not to the whole category of shudras or obcs or dalits, at large. these successful jatis form a minority within the shudra/obc category. this was the case in up, were the yadavs, kurmis, jats etc benefited to some extent, not all of the 70 odd obc jatis at large.. it's again, yadavs and kurmis etc in bihar, not the 130 other jatis..the dismantling of zamindaries and jagirdaries in coastal andhra and telangana benefited the reddy, kamma, kapu sub-castes.. and so on. the same was the case with kerala.. where the ezhavas and a couple of other jatis benefited more than the 70 other jatis..

so the class struggles, which had been waged earlier, finally transformed into a triumphal caste alliance when they became policy in the late 50s. all the progressive 'reform policies' in kerala should be seen as a culmination of a century old class struggles, wrongly referred to as mere caste -particularly in its reductive form, jati - assertion movements or religious reform struggles.. whether it was ayyankali's first agricultural strike or right to education movements, or the movements led by narayana guru and others - all of these can only only be understood as movements against caste or class rule. as dr. ambedkar had indicated in aoc, caste rule should be seen as constitutive of power derived derive from 'religion, status and property'. so the 1950s land reforms ensured some property for the ezhavas and a few others, while ensuring the maintenance of the religious authority, social status, property and power of the brahmins, nairs etc.. a strengthening of the caste order or caste rule through the the infusion of some new partner jatis into its fatigued body.

stagnation is a marker of agriculture in kerala more than in any other part of the country - it had arrived a decade or two earlier, in the 60s itself, while in many parts of the country it started in the eighties or nineties.. for instance, kerala now produces less rice than it did in the sixties, perhaps.. a large quantum of essential foodgrains come in from other states while large tracts of agricultural lands lie fallow.. this might all seem very strange, considering one would expect land reforms to increase productivity and output. in kerala, both have gone down over time.. if we analyse closely, we'll notice two subterranean facts: one, that land reforms actually arrived when a large number of the largest group of landholders - the nairs and brahmins - had already decided to consolidate their urban assets (and move away from agriculture?)..the nairs, for instance, had the highest literacy rates, perhaps, among all shudra groups in south india - right from telangana to tamil nadu - next only to the brahmins, even as early as 1911. two, the new group of tenants who had become title-holding farmers, the ezhavas and others, did not have a) the same resources as the erstwhile upper caste landholders to invest in increasing productivity, and b) a large number of these new farmers were themselves becoming more interested in urban jobs..

this caste alliance, which calls itself a communist party aiming for a 'people's democratic order' and working for the interests of the people against the 'landlord-bourgeois' dominated society represents the strongest class interest - or a combination of interests - in kerala.. it is characterized by what could be called babu collectivist interests - bureaucratic capitalists, as they would call in their terminology - plus a wide range of state-dependent commercial interests - from those involved in plantations to tourism to other such services. all of these interests share some common caste identities, and have a common vision.. we can perceive the peculiar contours of their vision by looking at the political economy they have together tried to forge in kerala over the last 6 decades - stagnation in agriculture, increase in consumption (among the middle classes, all fueled not by increased capital formation but by remittances generated from a workforce aiding economies elsewhere) without a concomitant increase in production, stagnation in industrial expansion, lots of disguised unemployment and underemployment. this represents the starkest case of what i call caste mode of production - selective adoption of modernity to fossilize social relations around caste through the agency of state power.