Spivak on Naxalbari

 Spivak, like other ex-pat buddhijivis, learned about Naxalbari from American academics like Marcus Franda. To be fair, Spivak was teaching European literature. She had no knowledge of Bengali politics. She still does not. Last year, she wrote a gushing letter to Mamta- who had beaten the Communists into utter political oblivion some 15 years previously- without realising that her thuggish regime was on the point of collapse.

In 2017, she wrote as follows in Frontier magazine which was founded by Samar Sen and which was initially sympathetic to the Naxalites (and thus against the mainstream CPM). I should mention, Congress would have been happy to encourage this second split within the Communist party. 

A Few Words About Naxalbari
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

It is hard to think that fifty years have passed since the first confrontation in Naxalbari.

The CPM had become part of the ruling coalition in 1967. The leading Communist ideologue, Hare Krishna Koner had become the Minister for Land Revenue. This meant that he could take 'surplus land' and redistribute it to party loyalits. Hilariously, the Naxal leader, Charu Mazumdar, lost 13 acres  in this way. This impoverished his widow.  

I was both too far and too close.

She was far away. The reason Naxalbari happened was because both China and Pakistan wanted to choke off India's 'chicken neck'- i.e. the narrow strip of land connecting the bulk of the country to the 'seven sisters' in the North East. Since Bengali intellectuals hate Hindus and Hindu majority India, many- quite naturally- wanted to support the country's enemies.   

One of my cousins, with whom I had gone to school every day as a child, was deeply involved.

Why? The answer is that hardcore 'anti-Browderists' were angry that the CPM had fought and won elections. The Naxals believed that Communists should only rule after they have killed all 'class enemies' and have gotten rid of Parliaments and Courts of Law and so forth.  

And one of our batchmates let loose unbelievable mass brutality upon young men lining a street, asking householders to close their windows.

No. The batchmate was useless. Some lowly policemen and some hired goons killed kids who might plausibly be taken for Naxals. This was a good thing. Sadly, the mainstream CPM was doing a great job fucking over the economy. 

Rumours, before cable television (we had a small black and white),

TV broadcasting in Calcutta only began in 1975- by which time the Naxals had been crushed. The first colour broadcast was in 1982. The CPM was firmly in the saddle in West Bengal by then. This was because it continued to redistribute 'surplus' land & enhance the property rights of share-croppers and tenants. 

before the internet, before satellite telephone. I was tucked away at the University of Iowa, a young Assistant Professor quite set in with the anti-Vietnam War struggle earlier, and with the diasporic support of the Bangladesh upheaval later,

there was no such 'diasporic support'. Incidentally, the Bangladeshi equivalent of the Naxals supported Pakistan over the Mukhi Bahini. Why? Pakistan was allied with China. Sheikh Mujib, like Indira, was considered Moscow's puppet.  

but about Naxalbari was caught in helpless hearsay.

She relied on Marcus Franda's book which came out in 1971. Sadly, it was shit. The truth is, firstly there was no on-going 'Federalising' process in India at the time. Secondly, Hare Krishna Konar had discovered that colonial law gave the Revenue Ministry considerable discretionary powers in redistributing land to 'loyalists'. This is what transformed Bengali politics. 

Hadn't enough money to go home until 1972, only then to realise the depth and breadth of the wounded polity.

Siddhartha Shankar Ray became CM towards the end of March. By July, Naxalism had been crushed. Stupid foreign academics who thought India was a 'soft state' were revealed to be ignorant cunts.  

But, and I say this with some embarrassment, an old cynical woman now, some of us had romanticised the fact that the first shot was an arrow.

It was fired by a tribal woman whose people had emigrated to the region about a century and half previously. She killed a police officer belonging to the erstwhile Bhutia ruling class. Would the Centre support the Naxals as a way to split the CPM? No. Naxalbari was next to the 'Siliguri gap'. Thus National Security concerns trumped petty provincial politics.  

My best understanding of the entire movement still comes from Sumanta Banerjee's In the Woke of Naxalbari.

Sumanta was a journalist who quit the Statesman in 1973 & went over to the Naxals. But they had already been crushed. I think Bhabani Choudhury, who was helpful to Samar Sen, was an influence. Prof. Ruth Glass- an urban sociologist from London University- was close to Jyoti Basu and used to visit once a year. In other words, we are speaking of some useless journalists and academics who had jumped on a bandwagon which had ceased to have any meaningful existence. Still, any Naxal faction (there were dozens of them) which joined mainstream politics, could be used to split the CPM vote (on a caste basis) and thus could be useful to Congress. It was around this time that Mamta was beginning her rise, as a street-fighter- for the Youth Congress in Calcutta. At a later point, the CPM would accuse her of working with the Naxals in places like Singur (where some agricultural land had been given to ig industrialists) . 

Sumanta's book, which came out in 1980, though glorifying Charu Mazumdar, focussed on the land question and thus the Left Front government had no great objection to it. But neither did Congress which Indira had successfully taken to the Left. The collapse of the Janata Morcha & Indira's return to power meant that pretty much everybody was on the same page. Either 'landlords' could transform themselves into gangsters or they would be preyed on by gangsters. In either case, nobody gave a fuck about them.  

I have learnt some Chinese since then, enough to teach some Mao Zedong with the help of graduate students in Chinese.

She knows about as much Chinese as she does about European literature.  

It seems at this distance that, although Charu Mazumder's general inspiration from Mao was certainly enormously effective and moving,

it was useless. Hare Krishna Konar had met all the top Chinese leaders during his 1960 trip to Beijing. Incidentally, it was Ho Chi Minh who confirmed to him that the breach between the Chinese & the Soviets was permanent. But, since China was much poorer than Russia, this meant that whatever arms Mao could give you would be wholly ineffective compared to what the Soviets could supply Indira with. Pakistan's defeat in Bangladesh meant that the Siliguri gap was no longer vulnerable. Naxalism was welcome to retreat into remote forests so as to fuck over tribal people there.

it was the at least temporary conscientisation

a term from Paulo Frere's 'pedagogy of the oppressed'.  

of Left intellectuals that seemed most impressive to us. In 1968, when French university students joined hands with the working class,

The working class decided they preferred De Gaulle to a German Jew like Cohn-Bendit.  

the Naxalbari phenomenon seemed to us, from far away, a greater political achievement.

Because Spivak had shit for brains.  

It is no doubt a function of my base abroad that I cannot readily perceive continuity between the Naxalbari movement and what is called Maoism now in India.

The CPM was pro-China. The Naxals were supporters of the Cultural Revolution which was utterly disasterous. The CPM was able to rule West Bengal for thirty years on the basis of land-reform & clientism. Could they break their own 'iron rice-bowl' and emulate Deng? No. Their cadres were criminalized and corrupt.  

It could also be a function of the horror of violence

unleashed by the Left Front? 

among my co-workers from the landless SCST-s (this is the descriptive they commonly use) on the border of Birbhum and Jharkhand. It nay also be because I have personally encountered ex-Naxals in Purulia, completely given over to hands-on work for agricultural justice; I have inevitably thought of swords and ploughshares.

Swords don't matter. Guns do. The government can give pensions to those who shoot Naxals. Thus Naxalism was bound to disappear as tribal people gained political control of their own ancestral territory. 

Compare Mahashweta's 'Duoupati'- a Santhal woman whose job is to get beaten and raped by the police- with Prespident Draupati Murmu. Two Bengali Brahmin women- Mahua and Mamta- attacked her for visiting Dajeeling last year. Now it is Mahua & Mamta who fear jail while Murmu remains Head of State. Will a Santhali speaking State be carved out for her people? I suppose so. 

I am a literary critic and a translator. In 1981, I translated Mahasweta Devi's "Draupadi". That story rather than the novel The Mother of 1084, set the seal on Naxalbari for me, as it will for generations to come.

Mahashweta- like Spivak, Mahua & Mamta- was a Bengali Brahmin woman. They may have looked down on Santhal women named 'Draupadi', but it is the Santhal woman who has prevailed. Centuries from now, school kids will chant the name of the 15th President of the Republic. Nobody will remember Mahashitter.