by P. A. Sebastian
The Kabir Kala Manch Defence Committee is a challenge to the traditions of the civil liberties and democratic rights movement built on the shoulders of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayprakash Narayan.
Co-option has always been a feature of the political activities carried out by dominant powers, who have the ambition of conquering the world. Co-option recruits people from opposition camps and keeps them in their place.
This characteristic of co-option is seen in the Middle East. The people of the Middle East had and still have a number of dictators adopting pro-American policies. Then, the opposition against them started to grow. In the course of time, they started to become old and political liabilities, rather than assets for their cultivators. Egypt and Mubarrak constituted a classical example. However, at some point of time, we were told by the western powers and their media that there was a revolution in Egypt by radical and leftist forces, who acted decisively to replace Mubarrak with a popular regime. The world media refers to these events as the Arab spring and revolution. However, we all know now what happened in Egypt. No change has taken place. There remains a pro-American regime as it ever was, probably, more repressive than in the past. What has happened is co-option of the opposition.
India has been a participant in this global effort. What recently happened in the case of the Pune based Kabir Kala Manch (KKM) was ideologically of a similar kind as the movements in the Middle East.
Some members of KKM wanted to surrender. Surrenders happen wherever there is rebellion and revolution – there is nothing unusual in them. What is unusual, however, is that a group of people in Mumbai calling themselves the “KKM Defence Committee” (KKMDC) facilitated the surrender of these members of KKM. That is, KKMDC facilitated negotiations with the government, negotiations with the Chief Minister himself, arranged the place of surrender, the method of surrender, the place of detention, and how the government will proceed against them. Such actions cannot be called political activity defending the original aims of KKM. Genuine defence committees have not functioned in this manner historically; government agents function in this way to co-opt political opponents. Will the members of the Kabir Kala Manch Defence Committee ever say that there should have been a defence committee to persuade Bhagat Singh and his comrades to surrender through negotiation? Such activities and statements negate the very existence of revolt and revolution. The KKMDC, as a justification, claims that whatever they have done is to prevent torture. In this context, one must remember life is the ultimate price which revolution pays, in the absence of which, there will be no revolution. Nevertheless, the members of the KKMDC call themselves the defenders of revolt and rebellion.
It may be noted that funded organisations are playing a major role in this phenomenon of co-option at present. For instance, district or state units of some civil liberties organizations are linked to NGOs or funded organisations. Just in one state, eight out of sixteen district units of a well-respected civil liberties organization have been directly recruited and paid by a particular, prominent funded organisation based in Delhi.
The Civil Liberties movement has a long history, both formal and informal. The formal history starts from 1936 with Rabindranath Tagore as the president of the Civil Liberties Union of India. Other members of this movement were well known freedom fighters like Sarojini Naidu, Jawaharlal Nehru and Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia. They had said, in no uncertain terms, that the Civil Liberties Union existed to fight against the government whenever the rights of the people were suppressed, not to crush the opposition however severe their differences might have been. No Civil Libertarian in India ever said that Bhagat Singh should have been hanged even though his methods and ideologies were fundamentally different from the ideologies of Rabindranath Tagore, Sarojini Naidu, Jawaharlal Nehru or Dr. Lohia. The Civil Liberties Union of India ended in 1946 when Nehru became the interim Prime Minister of India. It was claimed that as they were then in power, there was no need for a particular civil liberties organisation.
Later, the Peoples’ Union of Civil Liberties and Democratic Rights (PUCL & DR) was formed during the Emergency. The person who played the most prominent role in its founding was Jayprakash Narayan (JP). It is worth remembering that PUCL & DR were formed underground to fight the undemocratic acts of Indira Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi and their cronies who ruled India. It is known to everybody that JP was never a communist in his political life, nevertheless, the first major issue that the PUCL & DR took up, immediately after the lifting of emergency, was to constitute a judicial enquiry (led by V. M. Tarkunde) to inquire into the large number of “encounter” deaths. The inquiry was based on facts and proved beyond a doubt that all encounters were false, fabricated and stage-managed. Here no reference is made to a good number of CL&DR organisations which were formed in the wake of what is called the Naxalbari movement.
What is happening in Mumbai now in the name of KKMDC is something outside of this Civil Liberties tradition.
It may be noted that KKM was not a front organisation of CPI (Maoist). In spite of that, the CPI (Maoist) played an important role in making the KKM the popular political-cultural organisation it later became. Among the people who played that role were Anuradha Ghandi and other persons of her stature. There may be a few thousand people in Maharashtra alone who can sing, dance and perform as well as or even better than the members of KKM. Nevertheless, nobody knows them; if the members of KKM are known all over India today, it is thanks to their politics influenced by CPI (Maoist).
This trend of co-option has dangerous consequences. The emergence of committees like KKMDC are a challenge that the civil liberties and democratic rights movement faces. It therefore needs to be taken up as a challenge and ideologically fought with so that such efforts of co-option are defeated.
: from sanhati
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