EDITORIAL: Post-Copenhagen Conference, The Farce Continues on Climate Change

Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is now deeply red-faced by the exposures of its lies about its profound claims on the 'disappearance' of Himalayan Glaciers and occurrence of extreme weather conditions related to global warming. IPCC has now admitted that these are not based on any scientific evidence. The Copenhagen meet, as expected, achieved nothing to protect our planet instead caused huge spending of natural resources.

The IPCC has never addressed the real issue of the lavish life-styles of the rich people and the rich nations as reflected by their per-capita CO2 emissions. The IPCC, dictated by USA, refuses to accept per-capita CO2 emission as the yardstick and continues to use per-country CO2 emission instead, which shifts the blame to China and India, who emit substantial amount of CO2 simply because of their large populations. Thus India and China are squarely blamed for their large populations. This however is not true.

NSM has computed the climate-normalized per-capita CO2 emission ratios of various countries vis-à-vis India (using average annual mean temperature). The figures are quite revealing: Australia is the worst offender (the ratio is 11.1) followed by Saudi Arabia (7.8), USA (6.7), Canada (3.8), and Japan (3.5). European Union has modest ratio of 2.6 followed by Russia (2.5), Brazil (1.2), China (1.2) and India (1.0).

Per-capita release of CO2 of USA is 6.7/2.6 = 2.6 times that of European Union (by our method)! Question is why should the IPCC not take cognizance of this fact and demand that USA's per-capita CO2 emission be reduced to match that of EU at least? (This means reduction in emission of 3.7 Billion tons of CO2 per year alone from USA). Much of the problem will be taken care of even at the current rate of emission of CO2. But since the expense of IPCC and other UN bodies is mainly borne by the USA how can they take such a correct stand? As the saying goes do not bite the hand that feeds.

The greatest pity is that the Minister for environment, Jairam Ramesh himself rejects the per-capita yardstick and supports the per-country cap that will only help the rich nations. We want to ask Mr. Jairam Ramesh, the IPCC and others, two questions: (1) is the food intake for proper diet is based on per-capita or per-country basis? If it is by per country, then average Indian will eat only once per day compared to three times of EU and 6 times that of USA. (2) Is the CO2 emitted by breathing human beings based on per-capita or per-country basis? If it is by per-country basis, then every two Indians out of three have to be choked to death to fulfill the wishes of the IPCC, USA and other rich nations.

NSM states that climate-normalized per-capita CO2 emission can be the only basis for computation of emission norms. This value for the European Union should be taken as standard (with a prescribed capping factor); this will cap that of USA and other wasteful countries while allowing India, China etc to improve the living standard of their citizens. Of course, new technologies must be developed and used to improve the efficiency of use of energy and material in all aspects of our life, which will reduce the emission.

Editorial

Old wine in young bottle: The new President of BJP with old habits

The first major decision that Nitin Gadkari took as the President of BJP on the last days of 2009 was to support Sibu Soren as the Chief Minister of Jharkhand! A momentous decision for a man like Gadkari who just a few days back in his first press conference ostentatiously declared that he did not touch the feet of any person whom he did not respect! Sibu Soren must be a very respectable man for Gadkari and his party to be their unanimous choice as the Chief Minister despite his highly corrupt background! So what is the difference between the “old Rajnath” and the “young Gadkari”? It is Old wine in young bottle? So far as the RSS control over BJP is concerned, Gadkari apparently is the nominee of RSS. Nothing can therefore be expected to change in the ideological level. At the political level, the first act of Gadkari in supporting the minority group of Soren having only 18 MLAs is clearly as opportunistic as his predecessors or else how could the BJP with only 20 elected MLAs get into the ministry in a house which has 81 MLAs?

Welcome 2010

The first decade of the 21st century has very few happy moments to remember. In Gujarat we had started 2001 with the worst earthquake of the country followed by the most shameful genocide of 2002. The last few years witnessed the unusual spectacle of a crumbling American economy having been earlier hit by the deadly airplane attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.

We of course have our struggle to celebrate. The last seven years have been testing times for all of us in Jan Sangharsh Manch and the New Socialist Movement. With heavy odds against us, we have firmly stood our ground to uphold secular democracy and during this time even register the New Socialist Movement as a political party. To advance the cause of the working people and guide the movement, we now have our newspaper, “Elaan”. So while we take lessons from the unhappy past, let us look forward to an eventful 2010. From all us at “Elaan” and New Socialist Movement, we wish our readers a very “Happy New Year”!

Editorial

The Dividing Lines

Jana Gana Mana Adhinayak Jaya Hey
Bharat Bhagya Vidhata
Punjab Sindh Gujarat Maratha
Dravid Utkal Banga…

When Rabindranath Tagore wrote the national anthem, he was obviously dreaming about a vast united India, the India where people are not divided on the basis of narrow domestic walls. But people like Raj Thackeray and Bal Thackeray however want to revise and rewrite the national anthem altogether. Despite immense differences and diversities, India has emerged as an integrated nation-state and has survived several divisive forces; But can it now overcome the present divisive politics?

Sachin Tendulkar is not just another sports man playing in some obscure corner of the country. His domination in the field of cricket has not only made him a national icon but he may be the best in the world. Sachin has thus become the pride of every Indian and a common pride is always a powerful cementing force. Sachin was only voicing this sentiment when he declared that he was an “Indian” first and then a “Maharashtrian”. What Bal Thackeray has achieved by castigating Sachin is to destroy this very foundation of national integration. To reduce the stature of Sachin to a “Marathi Manoosh” is to shrink India to the size of Maharashtra.


Doob Doob Dubai

Dubai is known as the land of the real estate. Unlike the other six emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Dubai does not have any oil reserves and its economy flourished primarily on construction and financial investments to emerge as an international city. A city that can outsmart any of the western cities with its tall buildings, malls and seven star hotels. Out of the population of 17 lakhs, 2.5 lakhs are construction workers from outside.

With finance capital pouring in from all across the world, the barren piece of land became the pride of the Arab world but with the recession setting in, the party seems to be over. The huge constructed spaces now do not have any takers and Dubai has run up a staggering debt of over 80 billion dollars. The Dubai World, a state controlled business group alone accounts for 60 billion dollars.

The ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, has however remained as reckless as he used to be. He has shifted the burden of the crisis on the shoulders of lakhs of workers, engineers and architects by rendering them jobless and sit tight hoping that the neo-rich of China , India and of course the other emirates bail him out of is not so real state!

Editorial: Fading Out Of The Saffron

The last few elections seem to be bad for the saffron color. The Loksabha elections had already proven to be unfriendly to the saffron brigade and the results led to several convulsions including the ejection of Jaswant Singh. The elections to the Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh assemblies turned out to even more hostile. Irrespective of the party, whether BJP or the Shiv Sena, both had their common color fading away in Maharashtra. The other two states had otherwise also nothing to do with this color.

Ordinarily, one should not read too much into the results of the election since the electorate, having very little choice, keeps tossing the parties in and out every five years.

But the results of the Maharashtra elections cannot be brushed aside so lightly. With two saffron outfits, namely BJP and Shiv Sena wooing the majority committee communally as well as regionally and further with the Congress-NCP misrule for the past five years, the election results rejecting the BJP-SS combine unambiguously was indeed surprising.

The electorate in the last few elections including the elections to the Rajasthan Assembly is sending a message; the majority community cannot be fooled for all the time!

Editorial: 'Left-Wing' Communism: An Infantile Disorder

While we wholly disagree with the declaration of the Prime Minister that the CPI (Maoist) is the gravest threat to the security of the country, it is equally difficult for us to agree with the violent activities of the Maoist in the name of “revolution”. The call to boycott the recent assembly elections in areas of Maharashtra and other by-elections and trying to disrupt the same by violent means indicate a large degree of infantile disorder. Perhaps the party cadre should be referred to the classical work of Lenin himself on this issue. Lenin's last major work, addressed to the supporters of the Russian Revolution in the West, was entitled “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder - a critique of the “left-ism” of those who wanted to imitate the Russian Revolution, without paying attention to the specific conditions of their own country. Maoists are doing the same by aping the Chinese revolution.

Marxists seek to foster and educate the left-wing to develop a more sober and scientific view of the political terrain, to learn to understand the motivation of other social layers and how to win battles, rather than just fighting valiantly. A Marxist leadership does not look for the most left-wing position on any given problem, but rather tries to find the policy which strengthens and builds the self-confidence, unity and self-consciousness of the working class as a whole. The Maoist seems to have forgotten this basic lesson of Marx and Lenin after they dropped the suffix (ML)!

EDITORIAL: REDISCOVERING THE HINDU

While Jaswant Singh was rediscovering the virtues of Jinnah, the RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat was busy rediscovering the “Hindu”. During his mid-September visit to Ahmedabad, he put forward an inclusive definition of the “Hindu”. Though not very original, he said that the word “Hindu” would include all those who lived in India including members of all other communities like Muslims, Christians etc!

Perhaps Bhagwatji has forgotten his guru's teachings in the confusion of vote politics. This is what Guru Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar had said in his book “We or Our Nationhood Defined”:

“German Race pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by purging the country of the Semitic Races-the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by”.

“….. There are only two courses open to the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy so long as the national race may allow them to do so and to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race. That is the only sound view on the minorities' problem. That is the only logical and correct solution. That alone keeps the national life healthy and undisturbed. That alone keeps the nation safe from the danger of a cancer developing into its body politic of the creation of a state within a state. From this stand point, sanctioned by the experience of shrewd old nations, the foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment not even citizen's rights. There is, at least should be, no other course for them to adopt…”

The failure of the BJP led NDA to come anywhere near the half way of the total parliamentary seats has perhaps led the RSS Chief to redefine the word Hindu to reach out to the minorities but alas, Our Nationhood Defined by Guru Golwalkar has only one status for the minorities, their subordination to the majority. Has Bhagwatji worked out any formula by which so much of minority votes can be equated with so much of majority votes so as to conform to the Golwalkar's thesis??

EDITORIAL: THE INHUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

Whenever the Gujarat Government or its policemen gets exposed either in a law court or in the media regarding the atrocities on the minorities, their spokesmen invariably curse the persons who exposes them as anti-Gujarat human rights activists! Reacting to the “Tamang report” holding that the Isharat Jahan encounter case was a fake one, Shri Jaynarauan Vyas, the minister-spokeman of the Gujarat Government went so far as to accuse the lawyers of Ishrat to be allegedly inhuman as they did not sympathize with those who were the victims of the bomb blasts! He also asserted that Gujarat State has had lesser number of “encounters” than other states yet the events in Gujarat alone get focused. We kill less than you do- that seems to be the logic!

In the last seven years, many of the stories floated by the Gujarat Government to profile Narendra Modi as the “Hindu Hero” hunting down the “wicked Islamic terrorists” have come off the hinge. After the intervention of the Supreme Court, the investigation into the Sohrabuddin encounter case has not only revealed that the encounter was totally fake but now the same Government of Gujarat has now offered Rs.10 lakhs to compensate for the custodial death of Sohrabuddin! The SIT appointed by the Supreme Court in the nine important 2002 riot cases has also exposed and arrested important VHP and BJP leaders like Jaideep Patel and Mayaben Kodnani (who was a minister in Modi Government) proving that till now the investigators were protecting them.

The common masses of Gujarat must therefore take lessons from these exposures and refuse to succumb to the emotional communal propaganda since by doing so, they legitimize the most illegal and heinous acts of their leaders!

BJP's Fatal Obsession With Jinnah

EDITORIAL (Vol. 1, Issue 2, September 2009)

Researching on Jinnah appears to have become a fatal obsession for leaders of the BJP. The spectre of Jinnah has claimed yet another victim, Jaswant Singh, a senior leader of the BJP. In 2005, L.K. Advani had almost dug his own grave when he spoke in glowing terms about Mohammad Ali Jinnah at his mausoleum in Pakistan and described him as a rare secular man! What therefore draws these right-wing leaders towards Jinnah like fire-flies towards the proverbial fire?

The partition between India and Pakistan has always been the source of the divisive communal politics of BJP. To make Jinnah the villain of the partition suited BJP (as well as the Congress) since that pitted one community against the other. The communal contradiction covered up all other contradictions that in fact gave rise to the two nation theory. Unfortunately however, blaming Jinnah alone would not result in political dividend forever for BJP. Somewhere down the line, a realization dawned inside BJP that unless Congress and, more particularly, Nehru could be shown as equally responsible for the partition, the anti-congress Hindu votes couldn’t be attracted. The problem however lay in balancing the acts of Congress leaders like Nehru, Sardar Patel, Gandhiji with that of Jinnah.

In 2005, Advani made the first attempt under the guise of paying tributes to Jinnah, got his act all mixed up and ended up losing his hold over the party. Jaswant Singh’s attempt is even more pathetic. He did attack Nehru but committed the blasphemy of attacking Sardar Patel as well who undoubtedly is an icon in Gujarat. Jaswant Singh did not have a chance to last after making that gross blunder. Who will be the next to try the fine tuning?

The real history of the division of course lies in understanding the socio-economic development of the Indian sub-continent. Though it was not the objective of the Britishers to usher capitalism in India, colonization over a period 150 years had sown the seeds of capitalism in the semi-feudal soil. Analysing the conflict in the nascent capitalism at the time of Independence, we had in August 2002, written the following in the manifesto of the New Socialist Movement:

“The pre-independence contradiction between the Muslim league represented by Jinnah and the Congress led by Gandhi, Nehru and Patel reflected the quest of the “Muslim Capital” to carve out for itself a separate nation state in order to safeguard its existence, growth and development from the suppression by the “Hindu Capital” of the majority community in case of an undivided India. The partition of the country, instead of resolving this contradiction, accentuated the same manifolds leading to the consolidation of the communal forces in both the countries. The suspicion of each others motive egged on by the fundamentalist elements of both the countries, never brought peace amongst these unnatural twins having centuries of common lifestyle and culture.”

The Muslim league, which he headed, did make attempts to remain in an united federated India and M.A Jinnah presented his famous fourteen points on March 28, 1929 to the Muslim League Council at their session in Delhi. Primarily, the fourteen points dealt with the safe-guarding of the political power of the minorities within the Indian federation more particularly in the Central legislature. Jinnah wanted atleast 1/3^rd seats to be reserved for the Muslims. The proposal of Jinnah was of course rejected by Congress.

Nation-states in the era of capitalism have their own dynamics and growth as did the births of India and Pakistan. No amount of rewriting history can change this reality. What should concern us is not what took place sixty two years back but where India and Pakistan are today and where we would go from here.

Elaan is born!

EDITORIAL (Vol. 1, Issue 1, August 2009)

While launching “elaan”, the clarion call of the New Socialist Movement, one cannot but recall the opening lines of the “Manifesto of the Communist party” written by Marx-Engels way back in 1848:

"A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies…”

Yes, a spectre, though young and embryonic, has indeed come into existence to become the beacon for the struggling masses of Gujarat and ofcourse, the spectre to fear, hate and to be exorcised by exploiters of all hue! Ever since the middle of the nineteenth century, the capitalist world has been fondly waiting for the spectre of communism to vanish and they really believed that it had happened with the fall of Soviet Union in 1990s; the old communist parties that carried out the gigantic historical tasks of transforming the Soviet Union and China from backward semi feudal stage to the post second world war advanced societies, were perhaps not equipped to lead the peoples struggle in the post colonial period after the second world war. Dialectics, however, do not cease to operate. Like the fresh new leaves after the grey autumn, new ideas bloom. New parties are born. Some struggle to break away from the past whereas some are born free.

The soil of Gujarat however, has never been fertile for any communist movement to take roots; the working class movement under the Majoor Mahajan Sangh, influenced as it was by Gandhiji’s ideas of trusteeship, not only destroyed the working class militancy but stifled the growth of any progressive or revolutionary ideas. This void allowed the BJP led forces to capture the centre stage and create a formidable rightist state machinery by 2000. All political opposition was subdued including the weak CPI(M) and CPI. Under these fascistic conditions, the dialectical opposite was born. The New Socialist Movement (NSM) which was functioning as a quasi-political organization ever since 1989 alongwith its two sister organizations, the Gujarat Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) and the Jan Sangharsh Manch (JSM), decided to shed its ambiguity and declare itself as a political party in 2002.

The birth of NSM was a direct consequence of the situation created after bloody massacre of the Muslims who were systematically butchered with the help of the State machinery in 2002. NSM firmly stood by the side of the minorities and led a militant anti-communal struggle in every possible front including in the legal battles. In the specific conditions of Gujarat on and after 2002, the party adopted an anti-communal, pro-democracy mass-line within a broad anti-globalization coalition. Different struggles of different marginalized sections were brought under a common banner and the communal division was combated through joint struggles.

Elaan will be initially published in English and Gujarati language and will share with the readers its experiences of the past seven years both in the sphere of practice as well as theory.

The happenings in West Bengal are ofcourse of foremost interest to all communists since the events of Nandigram, Singur and now Lalgarh reflects the deep malaise of the left forces in India. We deal with that event as well as the latest development in the Nanavati Commission at the other end of the country. The consolidation of the trade union struggles under the banner of the Trade Union Centre of India at the national level would perhaps create the genuine revolutionary mass organization that the left movement desperately needs today. We are proud that the first issue of Elaan starts with the clarion call to the working class to participate in the national protest day on 13^th August, 2009.

Elaan is not just the declaration of the struggle of the New Socialist Movement but is a determination to be the voice of the new left!